


The Normandy Raid

by LCWells



Series: Rat Patrol [15]
Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Europe, Gen, Rat Patrol - Freeform, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6558475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LCWells/pseuds/LCWells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Normandy Raid is based in June 1944 in France where the Rat Patrol are infiltrating German-held France. A meeting between them and German General Erwin Rommel gives a hope for an early end to the war.</p><p>This is a war novel. There are examples of torture and death. Not long ones - I don't wallow in gore, but people die. You are warned. </p><p>I wrote three Rat Patrol novels. The chronology is The Norway Raid (1993), The Normandy Raid (2002), and The Last Ride Raid (1995). I hope to put the others up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Normandy Raid

**Author's Note:**

> From the printed novel. There were only 50 copies made: This story has been long in coming. I started working on it just after The Last Ride Raid (Criterion Press: 1998) came out. I was content to let this rest unwritten until a reader asked me to write the story in France.
> 
> That is more difficult than it sounds because it’s necessary to go back and find all those little bits you put into The Last Ride Raid, weave them into a coherent narrative, and tell a good story without contradicting what you’ve already written. In my universe, Major Hans Dietrich never saw the Rat Patrol in France. This story would have been easier if he had. Once I gave up some long cherished concepts (like taking everyone to Paris), the story began to write itself. 
> 
> One of the promises I made was to my original character, Colonel Peter Alexander. I told him that after giving him pneumonia in The Norway Raid, and a head injury in LRR, I would not injury him in this story. 
> 
> No story of this type is written without a lot of research. There has been a tremendous amount written about the Normandy Campaign, both before and after the fifty year anniversary in 1994. The amount of material becomes overwhelming – and sooner or later, you must stop researching and write. You will find a bibliography of the major sources that I used in the background. 
> 
> For a television show that was only a half-hour long, and lasted but two years, Rat Patrol has provided so much that is worthwhile. The fandom had hard times and good times. Let’s make the good times roll on and on!
> 
> This is an amateur, non-profit publication and not intended to infringe on any existing legally-held copyrights, including but not limited to those held by Mirisch-Rich and Viacom. Reproduction of this publication, in part or in whole, without permission of the author or artist, is prohibited. Copyright LC Wells 2002.

“We will finish him off,” the small unassuming Englishman in civilian clothes said to the stocky American officer. He pointed to a town whose name on the map was so small it was almost unreadable. “His headquarters is there, and we have a team of commandos ready to go after him, General Wilson.”

“Almost ready from what I was briefed on,” replied Wilson. “But what if his overtures for peace are real, Mr. Williams?”

“It would save a great many lives. I hope they are.”

“When will the information come in? We’re losing more troops every day. The invasion was bad enough but the attrition as we go through those damned hedgerows is massive!”

“I believe the meeting is happening today so maybe by tomorrow morning or afternoon, we’ll know something, General.”

“If you hear nothing, your British Special Air Squadron commandos in as scheduled towards the end of July? That’s what – three or four weeks away!”

Williams nodded regretfully. “Yes. According to the Maquis, the Germans have reinforced his headquarters at the château at La Roche-Guyon. It won’t be easy.”

“The Germans fight for him as if he were their only inspiration in France. The sooner Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is captured or dies, the better!”

***

The man standing in front of an antique floor-length mirror in his bedroom, adjusted the Iron Cross at the neck of his gray uniform tunic so that it hung straight, then smoothed his uniform. He’d started the hot July day riding beside the Seine, then after consulting with his officers, he’d spent the rest of the time in his casual dress, but with what was awaiting him downstairs, he had to appear formal. 

He shifted the medal once more and realized that he was procrastinating. He didn’t want to go downstairs. 

Outside, the shadows of La Roche-Guyon’s closed iron gates extended across the driveway that led to the headquarters of the occupying German army. Guards stood every few feet, scrutinizing every new arrival and departure. On the battlements, anti-aircraft guns and watchers scanned the skies. They had seen many battles between the Luftwaffe and the Allied flyers but so far no one had tried to attack the castle.

Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel had no illusions about the situation inside of the gates. He had requisitioned the castle when he first took over the defense of the Atlantic Wall against the invasion of the Allied army but it was all borrowed trappings, lent by the La Rouchefoucauld family who still lived nearby. Outside beyond the gates were armed troops, devoted to his safety, and beyond them the decimated armies of the Third Reich.

He knew they were losing. He was counting on his reputation and honor to be able to make an armistice with his old enemy, Montgomery and new enemy, Eisenhower, against a common enemy – Russia. 

Hitler wouldn’t even consider the prospect of a truce and that was why Rommel was being so very careful. Only a handful of men knew what he was going to do, and the very thought of what was going to be offered would earn the Field Marshal a hanging, with his wife and child having to pay for the rope and the paper-thin coffin that a traitor deserved.

Many would consider what he was doing treason – to the pragmatic officer, it was saving his troops and countrymen from the world of a madman.

Which was why he was going downstairs now, with his two dachshunds yelping loudly at his heels, to meet two men who were the designated contacts from the Allies, men that he only knew from files on his desk, procured secretly by the German intelligence officer who was bringing them to meet him. His codename was Larson, and Rommel didn’t want to know anything more about him.

So he walked to his office where three men awaited him, knowing that while their lives were in his hands right now, his and the future of the war were in theirs.

***

Master Sergeant Sam Troy, US Army, had never expected to meet Erwin Rommel. If someone had told him two years ago when they played cat-and-mouse with the Afrika Korps in the North African desert, that he’d be waiting for the leader of the German forces in France, he’d have said they were sand-happy, and called for the medics. Over the years, elite British and American commandos had tried to kidnap or assassinate the German general and all had failed dismally. Rommel was no fool, nor were his security guards. 

So what was Troy doing dressed in civilian clothing, standing besides the heavy brocade curtains that flanked the open latticed windows overlooking the entrance to the château? He was berating himself for following Colonel Peter Alexander into yet another tight corner. This time it was make-or-break – if Rommel decided to turn them over to his guard, they’d be dead before the night was out. The cyanide tablets hidden in both commandos’ shirts would ensure that. The officer he was condemning sat patiently in a chair beside the fire, smoking one of those vile French cigarettes that was all that was available. He wore a dark pre-war suit with shiny spots which gave him the appearance of a townsman down on his luck as so many of the French men were nowadays. His dark hair was brushed back and dampened by water though one lock fell forward over his thin arching eyebrows. His eyes flicked an inquiring glance out the windows where they could hear the sound of troops joking in German and roar of automobiles and tanks, then to the closed door that led to the front hall of the castle. 

The third man watched them both from the opposite side of the ornate marble fireplace. He wore a gray greatcoat with red shoulder straps that denoted him as being part of the general staff, or maybe the German War Office, over his uniform but his boots were as worn down as Troy’s under their high polish. His face was round and pitted from acne but he looked roughly Troy’s age. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, watching the door. 

“Calm down, Larson,” Alexander remarked in German making the man jump. “It is his castle. He can come and go as he wishes.”

Larson stared blankly at him, and Troy, whose German was minimal, recognized the intent if not the actual words. The muscles in his back twitched. Alexander was putting Larson in his place as an inferior, and from the deepening red of the man’s neck, succeeding.

The door at the far end opened, and the wiry general, flanked by the dachshunds and an aide, stepped inside. Rommel held up his hand, and the aide retreated outside closing the door behind him. There were only the four of men in the high-ceilinged room. 

“Shut those windows, Larson,” Rommel ordered and the officer went to the ones closest. Alexander waved, without looking behind him, for Troy to close the windows and curtains, and stood waiting for the general’s next move. He tossed his cigarette butt into the fire where it bounced off a log, then caught flame. 

Rommel eyed them all suspiciously before walking to the other armchair flanking the fire. Alexander sat after Rommel sat down, his dogs lying beside his polished boots. 

“You are here from Churchill?” Rommel asked bluntly in German staring at Alexander.

“Yes, sir,” Alexander replied in the same language using a slight Munich accent. Troy knew that he could have used any accent he wanted; one of the best things about Alexander was his ability to fade into any population. Troy had witnessed this when they’d escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, gone through Germany up through Norway, and out the northern route to England. This officer was a very accomplished spy. “You contacted the Résistance and through them London to set up this meeting.” 

“You are?”

Alexander smiled. “I am from London, sir.”

Rommel frowned. “What is your name?”

“I know him, sir,” Larson spoke up. “I recognized him at the pickup spot.”

Alexander’s gaze met the officer’s then flicked back to Rommel. Troy couldn’t tell if he was disturbed by the revelation or not. “I had no idea you remembered me.”

“It was a memorable evening in Paris,” Larson responded.

Alexander’s shoulders tensed slightly. “Very.”

Troy tensed. He didn’t like the dynamics going on between the two spies. With a shock, he saw Rommel noticed his reaction, and, from his expression, agreed.

“Let us get on with it,” Rommel interrupted. “I would like to know what the reaction would be to the suggestion of an armistice between our armies.”

Probably a laugh, Troy thought. He knew, from the last two months of undercover work, how badly the Germans were losing despite putting up hard-fought battles along the Normandy coast. Besides the battle between soldiers, the people of France were coming over to the Allied side, doing more damage to the infrastructure of the railroads and telephones than any of the thousands of the specialized commando teams sent in a month before the invasion. Then again it would save thousands of lives on both sides if we declared peace. The High Command might laugh first, but they might accept especially if the offer came from the leader of the Afrika Korps.

“What kind of terms are you offering?” Alexander said quietly. 

“Terms?” Rommel frowned. “I have no terms. I an asking if the Allied commanders would consider a truce to discuss further plans.”

“A truce.” Alexander pursed his lips slightly, and nodded. “I could suggest that to my commanders. But for how long?”

Rommel frowned. “Enough of this fencing! I am a plain-spoken soldier. What would be the response?”

“What about your Fuhrer?” Alexander countered with the same bluntness. “I am sure that he will not accept the loss of his armies and men in France.”

Rommel frowned uneasily. “It is no business of yours.”

Alexander eyed him without changing his expression. “I cannot speak for the Americans or my country, but I will tell them about your suggestion. I know that they would be very interested in hearing it.”

Rommel nodded. He apparently knew this was all he was going to get at this point, Troy thought. “Larson will take you where you wish to go to contact your people.” 

“When do you need your reply?” Alexander asked. “It will take me several days to get a response from London.”

The general shrugged. “More men die as we talk. Who knows what will happen tomorrow or the next day? The faster you contact your leaders, the more likely that this war will end sooner.”

“I understand, sir,” Alexander said rising. Troy stepped forward bringing himself into the firelight.

Rommel stared at him, and his eyes widened. “I know you, don’t I?”

Troy was rocked. His German was minimal but he understood this. There was no way he’d ever met Erwin Rommel, and no reason the general should know an American sergeant. 

“I believe we have a mutual acquaintance,” Rommel said with a slight smile, knowing the effect he’d had on the commando. “Hans Dietrich.”

“Dietrich?” Troy said in surprise, startled to hear his voice. He recognized the name if not most of what Rommel said. “Hauptmann Hans Dietrich?”

“ **Major** Hans Dietrich. He spent a number of evenings in North Africa telling me about your patrol,” Rommel said with a hint of laughter. “He wasn’t complimentary at times. He even showed me a picture of your group from the Gestapo’s files.”

“You made Dietrich unhappy,” Alexander translated with a hint of a grin. “Very unhappy. Is this the same Dietrich I met last year?” 

“Yes, sir.” Troy didn’t hide his grin. He’d bet Dietrich wasn’t complimentary at any time. The Rat Patrol had left mud too often on the captain’s face. 

Alexander chuckled, and switched back to German. “How is he?”

Rommel looked surprised. “You know him?”

“Our paths have crossed.”

The general looked very curious. “Where?”

Alexander shrugged. “It was a while ago. How is he?”

“So far he has survived.” 

"He's alive, Troy," Alexander said. _Yes, Dietrich would be out on the front edge,_ Troy thought. The man didn’t lack any courage despite being on the wrong side of the war. 

Rommel stood. “I will await Larson’s report,” he said briskly. 

The others automatically stiffened and saluted. It seemed appropriate though Troy wondered if he should. Rommel was a man who deserved the honor even if was inappropriate. Ah, well, he’d follow the example of his eccentric commanding officer, and Alexander had given a sharp British-style salute.

The general stared at them thoughtfully one last time, then swung on his heel, and left, the dogs trailing behind.

“So what now?” Alexander asked Larson, who opened the curtain over one latticed window.

“We will leave as soon as the general has made sure the halls are empty,” Larson said softly. He cracked open the curtains, waiting for a signal. 

Troy wondered what made a man into a traitor. He didn’t consider Rommel that – if nothing else the general’s demeanor made it clear that this was a painful move for him. But Larson was working against his countrymen. Who was Larson working for? The German Secret Service? Gestapo? Some other officers? The stocky man was an enigma to the American. 

Alexander didn’t seem to like him, and Troy trusted the colonel’s instincts after a year of following him into missions where no sane man ventured and returning safely. The only problem Troy had with Alexander was that he took too many risks. 

They saw Rommel exit the front door of the château, the dogs on his heels, tails wagging, and followed by the elegant aide. The two men walked down the stairs to greet someone in a car that had just pulled into the courtyard. The ornate iron gates swung closed with a harsh clang. 

A young officer leapt out of the front seat, and opened the back door, holding a sharp salute. A tall man stepped out, dust caked on his uniform and boots greeted Rommel with the old-fashioned Wehrmacht salute, and Rommel returned it, his stance that of welcoming. 

Troy almost laughed. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath in English. 

“Damn,” Alexander commented, his eyes narrowed as he watched the tableau. “Our friend, Major Hans Dietrich?”

“Ja,” Troy agreed. His accent was atrocious and the others winced. Troy mused that no matter how exhausted Dietrich was, he always had the ramrod bearing, and slender build that had made him automatically recognizable at a distance even in the wasteland of Tunisia. The red-haired young officer with him must be his aide, Troy thought.

Rommel flicked a glance upward toward the windows, then turned his attention to Dietrich who saluted. 

“Time to go,” Larson said with some urgency. “They’ll be coming in here and we must be gone.”

“Agreed, “ Alexander said. “Lead on.”

Troy noticed the courtyard was packed with Mercedes and soldiers. He wondered how he and Alexander were going to get out of La Roche-Guyon unnoticed. They followed Larson out into the hallway and headed for a heavy wooden door. 

Behind it a staircase led down and down, with several floors of corridors, then down into caves and passages. They heard the sound of boots on the concrete and flagstones, and booming echoes of voices coming from the rooms. Someone, either the Germans or troops centuries before, had fortified the levels under the château, and Troy wouldn’t want to be part of an assault team trying to get in. Finally, they reached the end of the staircase, and walked down a thin narrow corridor that was damp from the presence of the nearby river Seine. It was lit only by the occasional light bulb at far intervals and smelled of mold. 

Twenty minutes later, and after two run-ins with guards, which Larson took care of, the trio exited through a heavy, carved wooden door that must have been centuries old, and clambered through a curtain of ivy and creepers that hid the exit from the road. 

Troy estimated that their car was a quarter mile back towards the château. They walked up the road all immersed in their own thoughts, and listening for trucks or cars. A mile away, the Seine flowed by sluggishly, the red sky with vapor trails from aerial battles reflected in its waters. 

Troy wasn’t going to feel comfortable until they were far away from La Roche-Guyon and its dangerous inhabitants. He knew that this mission could have fallen apart in a second if Dietrich had spotted him or Alexander, unless Dietrich was part of Rommel’s truce-seeking cabal. God, they’d been lucky again. 

 

***

Major Hans Dietrich always enjoyed reporting to Rommel even if the news was bad. Rommel wouldn’t take it out on the messenger -- he preferred to channel his energies into looking forward, and didn’t bother with negative comments on dusty boots on a man freshly come from a battlefield.

Dietrich followed the general into his empty office, and settled into a hard chair in front of the desk. The maps were tucked in a battered leather case, worn soft at the edges from overuse and faded from days in the sun. 

He noted in surprise that someone had been smoking in the office. Dietrich doubted that Rommel would allow his aides to do so inside, but there was definitely the smell of French cigarettes in the room. 

Only the embers still burned in the fireplace. He understood why Rommel had burned wood even on this warm evening – the room temperature was cold inside the thick stone castle walls. 

“What do you have for me?” Rommel asked abruptly turning to him. 

Dietrich stiffened. “The reports from Caen, sir! May I?” 

Rommel waved, and Dietrich unfastened the briefcase and drew out the maps. There were handwritten notes on some of them, and a few messages from other officers, mixed in with the papers. 

They spent some time going over the notes, updating the maps that Rommel pulled from an antique credenza against one wall. 

“This is all _wokenkuckucksheim_ ,” Rommel said abstractly. 

Cloud cookoo land? What did he mean? “Sir?” Dietrich asked startled. He couldn’t see anything in the map that would elicit this comment from the officer.

Rommel looked up. “Our army groups are already stretched to their limits, and I get no decent replacements since all the able fighters are at the Eastern Front! How does the Fuhrer expect me to win this war!”

Dietrich knew he was now privy to very dangerous information, though the army basically knew that Rommel was unhappy with the High Command. He also knew he was trusted on a very basic level by the plain-spoken officer. Any criticism on the running of the war was a criticism of Hitler himself, and Rommel was playing with fire. Dietrich prudently just finished putting the papers away.

Rommel grinned unexpectedly. “You will stay for dinner, Major, and overnight. I would not send anyone off into the dark where the fighters might spot your car, and strafe it.”

“I’d be delighted, sir,” Dietrich replied politely. This was going to be an interesting evening. 

“We’ll talk of the old days back in the desert,” Rommel said. “Dismissed!”

Dietrich saluted and walked out to find someone to give him a room to clean up in before dinner. 

 

***

Sergeant Mark Hitchcock of the US Army knew that he would be killed by either side if they caught him before he made the rendezvous spot. There was an equal chance that he might be killed even then -- wearing a German uniform he was the enemy to the Americans, and if the German boy next to him wearing a poorly-fitting uniform knew he was a spy, Hitchcock would be shot. 

But time was running out, and he had a meeting to make. He waited until he and the boy were alone in the quiet just before dawn, and then he struck hard against the boy’s neck, knocking him unconscious. 

He slid forward through the wet grass, to the edge of the forest, then up into the deeper undergrowth. No man’s land. There could be troops on either sides of him, and he wouldn’t know. 

He pulled out a white handkerchief, and tied it to the end of his gun, then waved it in the air. 

Crackle, crackle, swish. The soldier coming through the growth was grimy and unshaven and looked reassuringly American from the expression on his face. He jerked up the muzzle of his rifle, and Hitchcock raised his hands obediently. 

“You give up?” 

“Yeah,” Hitchcock replied in his broadest American accent. “Take me to your leader.”

The soldier was startled but suspicious. “Who’re you?”

“Take me to whoever’s in charge, buddy.”

“Right. Come on. Leave that gun behind. Hands behind your head.”

Hitchcock propped it against the tree and went forward. 

Three soldiers came out of the bushes as they walked through the brush towards the road. They surrounded him as a lethal escort. Hitchcock understood the caution and would have done the same himself. He looked like any common German soldier, and with the amount of training he’d had, he was now fluent in the language. His fair skin was tanned a deep brown from two months of running around the countryside, sabotaging the railroads and taking down the telephone lines. 

The Americans had been warned about spies and infiltrators, so he patiently waited until they reached a coordinating spot before suggesting that they call for their intelligence officer. 

Three hours of walking brought them into a small French town well behind the lines. It had been taken over by the US army, and as the front troops left it behind, the auxiliaries had moved in with typewriters and repairs. New telephone lines had been strung where they had been painstakingly cut, first by the résistants, then by retreating Germans. 

Hitchcock knew this town well. He’d been part of the group who did the first set of cuts. 

Streams of German prisoners slouched through the town heading for interrogation camps, so when he and the others went into the old French building that had been co-opted as an interrogation center, they drew no attention. He was happy to see that – it would make it easier to go back into France and not be recognized. 

The sergeant handed him over to the lieutenant in charge, whose name was printed on his jacket. Jack Bowers. Two military policemen came in to stand behind Hitchcock, their hands on their rifles.

Bowers raised an eyebrow at the dusty condition. “Who is this guy?”

“Says he’s one of us, Lieutenant,” the sergeant in charge commented dourly. 

Hitchcock interrupted, “I’ve been with the Resistance for the last two months. Let me show you something.” The Long Island, New York accent did raise eyebrows from the officer. Hitchcock rolled up his sleeve to show the Fort Benning tattoo that he’d carried since an ill-advised outing in Georgia during basic training. 

Bowers wasn’t impressed, but he did open his mind to the idea that this might not be a common German soldier. 

“Okay, Sergeant, you and your men are dismissed." The soldiers left, leaving only the military policemen in the room. He turned back to Hitchcock. “You are?”

“Sergeant Mark Hitchcock, OSS,” Hitchcock replied. “I’ve been with the Maquis for the last two months.”

“Before the invasion?” Bowers was openly skeptical. 

“Someone had to prepare France for you guys,” Hitchcock replied sarcastically. “I was told to report in. Call headquarters and ask if Amber has sent a man in.” 

Bowers eyed him coldly. “’Amber?’ Search him, then take him to the attic. Guard him,” he ordered the MP in the back. “I’ll check on you.”

“Good,” Hitchcock replied. Several minutes later, he was locked in a hot, stuffy room under the slate roof. As soon as he heard the door lock behind him, Hitchcock went over to the small square window and forced it open. It overlooked the small town, now filled with trucks and American soldiers in worn, stained uniforms, all covered with dust. Wounded men were being loaded onto trucks.

It all looked reassuringly familiar. Only he felt as if it were a lifetime away. He’d been away too long from America and a world he left behind when he decided to become a commando and ended up part of an independent patrol in North Africa. 

He didn’t spend a lot of time musing about his past. At twenty-four…or was it twenty-three? He wasn’t sure what day it was right now. He wasn’t sure why he felt like time was running through his fingers. The past was a distraction from his current job and time was short on it. 

The war had spun from the reliability of known German reactions to their attacks to the immense chaos of the armies falling apart. A month before the invasion, he and Moffitt had been assigned to a group of résistants that had successfully infiltrated and destroyed so many installations that the Germans had put out special orders to kill them all. 

The toll on the French people was becoming unspeakable. Every time there was another successful operation, the Germans rounded-up civilians to be deported into Germany, and while the résistants intercepted a couple of shipments, trying to hide the civilians had proved almost impossible. 

The order to stand down on attacks until the invasion was successful had been a vast relief to Moffitt and Hitchcock – but not to the leader of the Maquis group. She was an old acquaintance of theirs from North Africa. 

Hitchcock had never expected to see Monique again after they’d parted from her and her boyfriend, Jean-Claude, back in the desert. He hadn’t liked her then, and he didn’t like her now. There had been trouble between he, Moffitt and the French group from the start. 

Sweating, he stripped off his shirt. The air was stifling in the small room and the morning sky was blue and cloudless. If there were going to be any thunderstorms, they were nowhere on the horizon. He pulled off his battered boots and then the socks with holes. That did feel cooler. Finally, he lay down on the floor, used the filthy shirt as a pillow, and fell asleep. 

From the length of the shadows in the room it was several hours later when he awoke to the sound of the key turning in the lock and a thump as the door opened. The guard came in. 

Hitchcock sat up and stretched. His throat was parched. “What?”

“General wants to see you. Get dressed. Hurry up.”

He buttoned the shirt and tucked it in. “Where is he?”

“Downstairs. Come on. You’ve taken long enough.”

Hitchcock shrugged and walked out, carrying his boots and socks. 

It was at least ten degrees cooler on the next floor down, and he almost shivered when he headed to the next level. 

A guard waved him into a room, then followed him in, and shut the door behind him. 

The man sitting on the only chair in front of a rickety table next to a closed window raised his head, then frowned. Hitchcock’s shirt was damp with sweat and wrinkled where it had been wadded up. “A little hot, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir, General Wilson,” Hitchcock said his tone respectful. They’d worked together in North Africa and Wilson was someone he trusted. 

“Want some water?” asked a soldier behind him in a familiar voice, and Hitchcock turned and grinned broadly.

“Tully!”

The man pulled off his heavy metal helmet, smiled and held out his canteen. “Nice to see you, Hitch!”

Hitchcock took a deep draught of the water, then wiped some of it over his face. It caked the dust on his bristling cheeks. “That’s good.”

“Glad to see you alive, Hitchcock,” Wilson said dourly. “Now report. Where’s Lieutenant Moffitt?”

Hitchcock wiped his mouth, then handed the canteen back. “He is still with the résistants, sir. The Germans shot up our radio. I’m supposed to bring a new one back with me.”

“Huh. Have you had any food?” Wilson asked.

“No, sir, not today,” Hitchcock replied.

Wilson smiled. “Tully’ll get you some after the briefing. We should keep you out of sight of the troops. What do you have to report?”

“Do you have a map, sir?”

“Pettigrew?” the general snapped.

“Yes, sir,” Tully replied, pulling a well-creased and water-stained map from the pocket of his jacket. It covered the land from the Normandy beaches to St. Lo and Caen – all of which were under dispute at the moment.

They spread it on the table. “We took down as many of the telephone lines and railroads as we could before the invasion. Now we’ve been working on preventing the Germans from reinforcing these areas,” Hitchcock said. His hand hovered over the map. “We’ve cut the lines here and here,” he lightly touched, “but we intercepted a messenger with orders for an armored car group, reinforced by Panzers, to come in here.” 

Wilson whistled. “We’d better pass that on fast.”

Hitchcock raised his hand. “I don’t really want to know, sir, if there is going to be some action in that area. What I don’t know I can’t tell the Krauts if I am caught on the way back.”

All three men knew that if Hitchcock were caught he’d either be shot out of hand, or tortured by the Gestapo or the SS. His precaution was practical though no one liked it.

“So ‘Amber’ is still active?” Wilson mused. “Very good. How are the people you work with, Hitch?”

Hitchcock stood back. “Remember Monique, Tully, from North Africa?” 

Tully shook his head. “I heard about her, but I wasn’t on that raid, remember?”

“She’s a goddamn pain in the ass,” Hitchcock said harshly belatedly remembering that the meeting with Monique had happened during one of Tully’s hospitalizations. “Friendly one day, not the next, plays the guys off each other, arrogant as hell. She’s been around here for months, and did a lot of damage even before we arrived which is why the fighters followed her, but we’ve got only a couple of her buddies left. We can’t really trust anyone right now, and the civilians don’t trust anyone of any side. There are various groups fighting here in France – the Resistance, the Communists. . .”

“Why do you bring them up?” Wilson asked sharply as he leaned back. The chair creaked. 

“Because Monique’s a Communist and she’s one of the few that have survived the Germans and the French Milice cops. The Krauts hate the Communists more than we do. She tried to convince Moffitt, and me, to join the Party but… “ Hitchcock shrugged. “We’re no fools.”

“So she wants France to be Commie like Russia?” Tully asked with a heavy dose of skepticism. “Not the same woman we knew in the desert.”

“The Soviet Union is on our side,” Wilson commented looking at Hitchcock who spread his hands, shoulders raised. 

“For now,” Hitchcock said. He took a deep breath. “I don’t trust any of them, sir. Monique’s boyfriend, Jean-Claude, he’s dead – he got picked up in Lyons by that Jerry bastard Barbie and died under torture. He broke before he died and the Krauts picked up most of the group, except for her so she went north. The Germans have a price on her head larger than the one we had back in North Africa, Tully.”

“Bigger than the one on your head now, Hitch?” Tully teased. 

“Oh, they want us all. And they’re closing in on us, sir. I need to get back to the unit.” 

“Don’t worry, sergeant, you’ll be back in it soon enough,” Wilson said with a grim smile. 

Tully raised his head sharply. “He is going back right away, sir?”

“Tomorrow before daybreak,” Wilson amended. “Or as soon as we get another radio to send in.”

“I’ll bring some food upstairs,” Tully said. “See if I can get some hot foods."

“Get some supplies as well, Pettigrew,” the general barked. “It sounds like the group needs another man. You’re going with him. Dismissed!”

 

***

 

Lieutenant Jack Moffitt, formerly of the Royal Scots Greys, and the Rat Patrol, now codenamed ‘Amber’, sat on the stone floor of a church crypt and idly translated the Latin on the side of the tomb in front of him. The carving of a stone knight on top had his hands folded in prayer. Moffitt agreed with that sentiment. If he could he’d have his hands folded as well, but he didn’t want to give Monique restlessly pacing the room, the pleasure of seeing him praying. 

His hands were stained with dirt as were the knees of his worn pants. Rich dark dirt from the graveyard. He hadn’t had time to wash his hands before the Germans arrived, and he’d dived into the back of the church, and down in to the crypt. This wasn’t the first time he’d visited the church at Gallion-sur-Seine.

He could date the church from the stones in the walls – the lower part dark stained rock from the cliffs farther up the river, and the top smoother stones. It blended into stone of the ceiling, which was, as Moffitt knew, the stone floor of the Norman tower that made up one end of the church sitting on a bluff alongside the Seine. 

He heard the sound of a truck just outside the narrow, half-circular window that was the only part of the church’s crypt above ground. Various panes of glass had been broken over the years, and leaves had drifted in to decay on the stone floor. The mulch was gone, probably Pére Mathieu’s work, but the stain and the smell of rotted vegetation permeated the crypt. 

Moffitt tensed. He stood hidden in a shadow and hoped he couldn’t be seen if they decided to look in. He was tall enough to see the boots as they walked through the thick grass outside the window. They both heard German.

Monique crouched under the window, her gun held ready but down by her side. 

The face of the young soldier who peered in was covered with dirt and lined with exhaustion. He wore the markings of a Wehrmacht private, who looked like he was barely out of his teens. The man straightened up, and called to his friends.

Moffitt shook his head at Monique who had raised her gun. The soldier had said he saw nothing.

The sound of the village priest’s voice floated in, talking with the officer in charge, and ten minutes later, the soldiers climbed back into the truck and headed away.

Moffitt gave a sigh of relief and sank against the wall. “Gone,” he whispered in French to Monique, who scowled, but didn’t move just in case one of the Germans came back. 

Beside him, the doorknob opened. Moffitt scrambled up, his gun held ready. Monique aimed hers as a tall man entered, dressed in a worn too-small black cassock and holding a votive candle in a holder, shielding the light with one huge hand. 

“Bonjour,” he said softly. “The Germans are gone and they seldom come back. Come into the kitchen where if they see a sliver of light, I will get a stern warning about curfew, not a bullet in the head for having lights down here.”

They followed him upstairs to the kitchen where the breeze coming through the window was fragrant of summer flowers and freshly dug earth, and they could hear the sound of the Seine in the distance. Overhead was the faint persistent drone of bombers heading over the occupied land. They were probably heading for Berlin, poor sods, thought Moffitt going over to the sink. He turned on a tap and scrubbed at the dirt, finally getting himself mostly clean. There was no soap or a rag to dry his fingers, so he shook them in the air until they were mostly dry. 

Turning back he saw Monique had settled on one chair, facing the door, while the priest laid out bread and cheese, knives and forks, and placed a bottle of wine at one end of the table. The porcelain cups didn’t match each other. They had obviously been donated to the church by various wealthy families over the years since they were fine quality china. 

Moffitt’s mouth watered. Fresh bread, cheese and wine – after living on rations and barely cooked meat for a month, he was starving for real food. Virtually every time the rabbit or chicken or goose had nearly been done, they’d been startled by the Germans, and he was tired of leaving dinner behind. 

He sat down on a stool, finding it uncomfortably low for his long legs, and folded his hands obediently as the priest said a blessing, then reached for the bread.

Monique got there first, ripping the loaf into three parts and setting it out. “Equal shares, Moffitt,” she said firmly. “We all share everything.”

“Of course,” Moffitt agreed though feeling irritated by her tone. He would have shared it equally – and he resented the insinuation that he wouldn’t. You didn’t have to be a Communist to share equally– only to have good manners. At least she hadn’t called him Comrade Moffitt! “We all share everything.”

The priest chuckled. “And how many are you now?”

Monique swallowed the large chunk of half-chewed bread in her mouth, and reached for a cup of wine. After clearing her throat, she said, “Us, Pére Mathieu. Just us.”

The Pére was startled from the way his eyes widened. He looked from one to the other. “Just the two of you left?”

“I’ve sent for reinforcements,” Moffitt said. “But they may not arrive by the time the Allies do.”

“I have heard their guns,” Pére Mathieu replied. “Your troops, they are that close?”

“We don’t know,” Monique said angrily. “We lost the radio when they captured Paul and Theron!”

Their two comrades had gone down fighting. They had held off the German squad long enough for Monique and Moffitt to escape. The radio had been smashed into bits by German bullets. 

“The Jerries took them to the Gestapo base not far from here,” Moffitt said. “Do you know about that, Pére?”

His gaze dropped to the table top. “Oui. Few come out alive from the farmhouse. I bury their dead.”

Moffitt was chilled by that statement. The group had been tightly knit even before he and Hitchcock joined them, and one by one, they had been whittled down to him and Monique. He hoped that they might get the two men back, and that Hitchcock would be joining them soon. He’d rather have one of his partners watching his back than the woman across the table. 

She cut the cheese into three equal parts and bit into hers. “We are thinking of paying a visit to the Gestapo farmhouse, Pére. Do you know a way to get in?”

She has to be crazy, Moffitt thought. The Germans are bastards, true, but bearding them in their lair is a sure way of getting killed. 

The priest shrugged his shoulders. “Getting in is not difficult for you résistants. It is getting out alive. The Germans are doing something unusual up there. I have seen more than one of their trucks go by carrying prisoners or more troops. They are sending their living prisoners elsewhere.”

“How are things, Pére?” Moffitt asked. “We have heard nothing for a week.”

“Do you think I listen to the radio broadcasts from the BBC? It is most strictly forbidden,” Mathieu said with a slight smile. He speared a chunk of cheese. “But there are many German troops on the roads and they do not have the look of men who are driving back invaders.”

Monique laughed softly. “We will kill as many of them as possible before they leave here. Then they cannot be taken to the Eastern Front to kill our friends.”

“Your friends, maybe, and the Russians are making mincemeat of them,” Moffitt cut in. “Masses of them are freezing to death on the steppes. The Germans are probably having a hard time bringing back the bodies to bury there are so many of them.”

She shrugged. “So what?”

“You can’t kill them all,” Moffitt said patiently as if to a small child. “Better to keep some of them to help control the survivors after the war.”

She sneered. “You mean keep the officers?”

“I don’t have your bloodlust,” Moffitt retorted. “I’ve seen too much blood spilled in the last few years.”

The priest chewed on his slice of cheese. “I do not think that attacking the farmhouse is a good idea. You will probably end up with your two fellows in a dungeon.”

“But we need to do something for them!” Monique argued. 

“We will. We need to meet up with Hitch. He’s coming back across with the radio, and we’ll find out what’s happening,” Moffitt replied after swallowing the last of his bread. “If he has made it out to our lines.”

“Paul and Theron –“

“Are probably already dead,” Pére Mathieu said calmly. “They were captured when?”

“Two days ago,” Moffitt said. 

“Then they are dead or on their way out of France,” the priest concluded. “They have sent many of their prisoners to Germany for further interrogation or to the labor camps.”

“You know a great deal about this, Pére,” Moffitt asked inquisitively, cocking his head. His dark hair had grown long in the two months of this operation, and curled over his collar. He felt unkempt. 

The man shrugged. “I bury their dead. And their soldiers talk to me after I am done.”

“Can we stay here tonight?” Monique broke in abruptly. 

“Of course. It is after curfew and you cannot be outside without being shot,” Pére Mathieu said, sweeping the bread crumbs into his hand, and carefully depositing them in a small bowl. “For the birds, you understand. The crypt is the safest place. The bars in the window are held in by rotting cement but you can remove them if you have to leave swiftly.”

“But no lights,” Moffitt said.

“Non. Hopefully, like the dead, you will not be disturbed.”

She shrugged. “I do not mind the dead, just the living.”

The priest stood. “Wait here while I get my radio. If we turn it on very softly, we might hear London.”

 

***

 

Troy drove the German staff car under a welcome shelter of a spreading oak tree as they heard the sound of airplane engines. The Allies ruled the sky and the car would be a target. Overhead, the leaves were full and green, and bees zipped passed the windshield. The land around them seemed at peace.

“Will your people take the offer?” Larson asked abruptly in English. 

Alexander flicked his gaze from the fields that he was eyeing back to the officer. “English?”

“I practice occasionally,” Larson said. “And I’m sure your man up there should know exactly what is going on.”

“I can tell him that myself,” Alexander replied edgily. 

“There are too many variables to let this stay between you and me, Mr. Alexander.”

Alexander smiled slightly, just showing his teeth. “I am now a colonel, remember.”

“Were you working for British Intelligence when we first met?” Larson asked. “Back before the war?”

“I was a traveling salesman,” Alexander countered, shifting so he had a better look at the man.

“With offices down near Chequers?” Larson commented. 

Alexander shrugged. “I worked for a camera manufacturer, remember.”

Optics and cameras and industrial espionage? Troy wondered. Well, Alexander had stated that much in the past. It was all the rest of what he did that made Troy wonder. Didn’t Churchill have a place called Chequers? 

“I think we know enough about each other,” Alexander said calmly. “The fighters are gone so we should be.” He tapped the worn leather of the front seat, and Troy knew that it was a signal to get moving.

They started off down the rutted road. To each side were high hedges guarding rolling fields of corn and barley. It would be a good harvest if the farmers had the nerve to harvest it. Too often the fields were battlegrounds between the two armies.

Troy drove around a corner, and they saw the silvery surface of the Seine several miles away. One bank was higher than the other, shady with trees, while the other side rolled down to the river. He stopped the car.

“I will be in touch with you, Larson,” Alexander said abruptly, picking up his hat, and tossing his coat over his arm. “Same place as we met before.”

“I will be awaiting your message,” Larson said urgently. “This is the best for us all, Alexander, this peace offering. We can turn our energies towards the East. Surely your people must see that the Russians are more dangerous than us Germans!”

“They’re on our side,” Alexander replied neutrally.

“They’re Communists!”

“They’re our Communists. I will be in touch.” Alexander nodded to Troy, stepped out of the car, and slammed the door. He disappeared into the woods on the other side as the car moved on.

Larson shifted uncomfortably in the back seat. “How do you feel about the Communists?”

The sergeant’s gaze flicked to the mirror noticing the discomfort. If this man was a spy, then he was not comfortable with his position. Troy had gone undercover in the past, and handled it better than this man. 

“The French Communists will take over this country,” Larson said emphatically. “If you do not stop them, when you have taken back this country, the Communists here will take over!”

Troy shrugged. 

“Will Alexander listen to me?” Larson asked. “He must get the agreement of England and America. This war must stop!”

“Don’t expect Hitler will let you stop,” Troy finally replied after a few seconds. 

“Ah, an American!” Larson said with a broad grin. “I have visited New York. A wonderful city.”

Troy nodded but didn’t comment. 

“They must understand,” Larson continued insistently. “It is the only way.”

Troy had severe doubts about the ability of Hitler to take the news that he’d lost France with any equanimity. He parked the staff car at a deserted crossroads. “I get out here.”

Larson nodded. Around them stretched the fields and the rolling hills, the sky dotted with black crows and the summer haze. To one side was a guidepost denuded of its markings so no one could tell where the roads led. 

“Good luck,” he offered. “I look forward to hearing from you or Alexander.”

Troy picked up his coat and hat, and looked back. Larson looked confident as if he hadn’t been shifting uncomfortably on the cracked leather seats moments before. “Hitler won’t accept it.”

The spy’s gaze hardened. “He will be taken care of.”

The implications almost made Troy gasp but he held himself in control. He slid out of the front seat, leaving the keys in the ignition. 

He headed down the road to the east hearing the car start behind him and drive off back toward the river. A half-mile away, Troy dodged into the trees and set off cross-country. 

_‘Taken care of’? Are they planning to kill Hitler? My God, London and Alexander need to know this!_

 

***

 

Hitchcock was stretched out on the wood floor in the attic again, but this time they’d given him a blanket and a pitcher of water and a glass. He was resigned to his fate. A chamber pot with an ornate top was discreetly put in one corner of the room at the far end. 

Tully entered the now-unguarded doorway with two plates of food. “Dinner.”

“So you’re with me, eh?” Hitchcock asked sitting up.

“Wilson thought that maybe you’d need some help you could count on.”

“Better keep your voice down,” Hitchcock warned. “The window’s open.”

Tully glanced at it. “So much noise out there no one will hear.”

“The colonel would shoot you for carelessness.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Shall I close it?”

Hitchcock frowned. “Gonna be hotter than hell. Keep your voice down and we should be okay. What’ve you been up to, Tully? When’d you get here? I haven’t seen you since April when we were all split up.”

“You, Moffitt, Troy – all gone and left me behind,” Tully mocked, handing him the plate of beans. 

“How’s your shoulder? Didn’t you wreck it?”

Tully shrugged. “S’okay. I came ashore on the 6th when Wilson went in.”

Hitchcock whistled. “First wave?”

“Nope, sunset. They don’t waste generals that way. But first day anyway.”

“How was it?”

“Iffy,” Tully said after thinking a second. He remembered the bodies in the surf and the bloody sea foam. “If the Krauts had been better organized we’d have been in real trouble.”

“We cut the telephone lines so they couldn’t get the word out,” Hitchcock commented. “Hell, that should have tipped them off there was trouble. But they didn’t believe it was coming from the radio traffic.”

“You were monitoring German radio?” Tully asked. 

Hitchcock nodded as he chewed on a hunk of bread. “Very carefully. They got those goddamn radio trucks to pinpoint our broadcasts. That’s partly why I want to get back in as soon as I can, Tully. We’ll never know if Moffitt and the others are alive unless their broadcast comes out on time.”

“Set time each day?”

“Until ordered not to,” Hitchcock answered. “Just like the old days.”

“How is Moffitt?”

“Okay. Thin and bony – his French has improved. He can still pass for Alexander as long as they aren’t standing together. Wonder what Troy and the colonel have been up to?”

Tully shrugged one shoulder. “What they do best. Wreak havoc.”

 

***

 

Hans Dietrich had forgotten what it was like to be clean, really clean. He had scrubbed himself with perfumed soap in a real enameled bathtub. He wondered where Rommel had gotten it, then realized it was probably from the original owners of the castle. 

Afterwards, he wrapped himself in a towel when he discovered someone had taken his uniform off to clean, lay down on the bed, tossing a thin sheet over his body and had fallen asleep.

He was awakened two hours later by a servant returning with his cleaned uniform, and his boots polished to a high gloss. He realized he was running close to the dinner hour, and dressed hastily. 

He stepped outside onto the small veranda and looked around the courtyard below.

La Roche-Guyon sat at the base of a tall cliff overlooking the Seine. Above the buildings was the ruin of the old castle dungeon, the round conical tower now adorned with an anti-aircraft gun, barbed wire, and machineguns. The veranda he stood on overlooked the back courtyard, which had two cars, his own and Rommel’s staff car, and was overlooked by thick trees and bushes. His sharp eyes spotted snipers in the trees and other guards, and he knew he himself was under scrutiny.

He knew a little bit about the area from a pre-war catalogue that discussed the French Impressionist painters and their favorite villages. The castle had been immortalized by Renoir and Cézanne, and Giverny, home of Monet, was not far away. He had seen the paintings hung in museums in Paris that he visited after the occupation, and he recognized the shape of the land. The castle was cut into the cliffs that flanked the Seine which flowed to Paris to the south. 

Looking at his watch, he realized that dinner was due shortly. He went back inside, looked in the mirror, slicked back his hair, and went into the main building looking for the dining room. 

It was an above standard dinner tonight, and Dietrich wondered why. Too often he had sat down to hard bread and boiled eggs at Rommel’s table, and this was actual food served by stewards, and probably cooked under the strict eye of the Wehrmacht cook who ran the kitchen. The dish was a beef stew with tender carrots and onions probably from the castle’s garden, and fresh bread. The French had the best bread. 

Rommel ate it without even noticing what was before him. Then, after dessert was served, he abruptly told his aides to go back to work, and waved Dietrich to sit down again. “Tell me again, Hans, where were you in the last several years? After North Africa.”

“After North Africa? I went to the Russian front for several months, then went to Norway. After that I was transferred to your command here, sir.”

Rommel pursed his lips. “Norway? I remember you saying something about Norway. Didn’t you meet up with those commandos that plagued you back in North Africa?”

Dietrich’s mind flashed back to those months in the frigid countryside. Even now he couldn’t look at fish without thinking of how many mornings he’d been greeted with fish for breakfast. “Ja,” he laughed. “Yes, I never expected to see them again, and what happens but they appear!”

“I remembered you telling of that last incident when they freed that spy.”

“And escaped to the coast. I nearly was killed!” Dietrich couldn’t put any real anger into it. His enemies, instead of abandoning him to freeze to death in a field on a cold Norwegian night, had put him safely in a church to sleep off the blow that had knocked him out. Some day he meant to ask them why. 

Rommel glanced at him. “Where do you think they are now?”

Dietrich shrugged. He was intrigued that Rommel was suddenly probing into Norway, something Dietrich had only mentioned in passing, but he wasn’t going to ask questions as to why the field marshal wanted to know. “If they are alive, they are probably in France, either together or apart.”

“And the spy?”

“The spy…ah, yes, _Oberstleutnant Alexander_ – he was a British spy of a very high caliber.”

“What did you think of him?”

“I barely met him, sir.”

Rommel looked up under his brows. “But you formed an opinion?”

Dietrich smiled. “I read the file Berlin had put together and was very impressed. Sergeant Troy invaded Gestapo headquarters in Norway to rescue him. If Troy trusted him, then I would assume that Alexander has to be a worthwhile officer.” 

Rommel nodded abstractly. 

Dietrich was more and more curious about why the Rat Patrol was suddenly on the general’s mind. “Some day I expect to see the Englishman, Sergeant Moffitt, in the hedgerow country,” he added conversationally. “I have no doubt he is with the British forces.”

“Somewhere around Caen maybe?” Rommel asked, pointing to the city on a map. 

“Undoubtedly,” Dietrich agreed. “Or he might be somewhere else, destroying our forces, if the group is still working together.”

“Working with the French Resistance?” Rommel asked. “They keep blowing up our bridges and the railroads. You can barely get a call through to Berlin anymore!”

“I’m sure you can make a call to America though. I was recently in a village that we took back from the Americans – they had restrung the telephone lines.”

Rommel laughed. “I hope you cut them, Major!”

Dietrich nodded, his eyes twinkling. “In pieces after I made several calls misdirecting their troops. It gave us a few hours of reprieve.”

“But they pushed you out.”

“They pushed us out,” Dietrich replied in an uninflected tone. “I saved most of my men.”

Rommel shot him a brittle smile. “That is the best we all can do, Major. Save most of our troops for the future.”

“To save Berlin?”

“To save Germany.”

 

*** 

 

It was mid-morning by the time Troy reached the barnyard. He’d spent the night sleeping beside the river. He greeted the boy sentry who was sitting under a huge leafy tree, watching two fat geese that set up a racket as Troy approached. It would take a good German soldier to notice the gun by the shepherd’s side, and Yves was an excellent shot. The boy had joined their little band not long before Troy and Alexander arrived, and proved his coolness under fire in the last two months. Troy didn’t speak French well enough to know where Yves came from, but he knew that the woman who was standing in the shadow of the doorway, her dark brown hair tied back under a scarf, and one hand hidden undoubtedly holding a pistol trusted the boy like her own son.

Troy remembered Gabrielle Ouvert Marchand from North Africa. She’d been in love with Jack Moffitt when he was an escaping prisoner just after Dunkirk, but had married an older man who was now serving with General de Gaulle. Gabrielle had gone back to France to look for her father, only to find that he’d died of a heart attack one day working in his field, and her staunchly pro-German aunt and uncle had taken over the small farm. 

Knowing that they’d betray her, Gabrielle fled to the Resistance. Troy wondered if she still loved with Moffitt – but he never asked.

He inside the thatched farmhouse. “Where is he?”

She shook her head. “Le Colonel has not yet returned, Sergeant.”

“He must be taking the long route,” Troy said uneasily. A fire burned on the stone hearth making the room uncomfortably warm. He saw the radio sitting out over to one side, with several men’s jackets lying over it, shielding it from plain view. It looked battered from months of hard use. Their group was the second to have used the machine – the radio had belonged to another group of agents who had been captured. Gabrielle had taken it from their hiding place, and when Troy and Alexander joined the group, had offered it. Since the agents’ machine had been smashed on impact, they accepted.

“What was the meeting about?” Gabrielle asked sitting down beside him.

Troy shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. I really don’t know – the discussion was in German.”

She cocked her head. “Where were you?” 

“I’ll let the colonel explain,” he said uneasily. “Did we get a message last night?”

“Oui. They said that there were bluebells about to bloom.” 

“So they want to know about the colonel as well,” Troy commented. “Did they mention pink roses budding?” They’d been transmitting the movements of several German tank divisions, information that was invaluable to the Allies, with a floral motif. The state of French gardens was of abiding interest to London. 

Gabrielle nodded. “Oui. They got the information. I have some soup if you are interested.”

“Found a chicken, eh?” It had become a running joke in the troop that every soup had chicken – even if it really had only vegetables. Chickens were hard to catch. 

She smiled. “Yves found it in a snare that he set for rabbits.”

“That boy’s in love with you,” Troy warned.

“He is not!” she replied in a teasing tone. “I do not need more men in love with me!”

“Don’t worry,” Troy replied. “I’m sure that you can handle a boy.”

She lightly cuffed his shoulder and went over to the fire that was burning down to its embers. If anyone came to the abandoned farm they’d find a bucolic existence of a farmer with his wife, and his son out guarding their geese. There was no trace of their activities except for the guns and the radio. 

Troy unearthed the codebook and began encoding the messages. He looked forward to finally meeting up with the Allied troops, and getting new codes. He was always afraid that the one they had was broken. 

Five minutes later, he was ready. “Gabrielle?”

“ _Oui_?”

“Coast clear?” He looked at her, and she went to the door to look outside. 

“Yves isn’t there,” she said in a low tone, though her face had an undisturbed expression. 

“Probably in the trees,” Troy replied, his hands on the latches of the suitcase. It was the acceptable euphemism for answering a call of nature. 

“I do not hear the birds,” she said stepping back inside. “It’s very quiet out there.”

“Too quiet?” he asked.

“ _Oui._ The birds are not usually this quiet. Especially the crows.”

“We’ve got guests,” Troy said, the back of his neck prickling. Casually, he rose and walked over to the fire carrying the codebook. Acting as if he was warming his fingers, he tossed the paper into the flames first; then the book. “Damn!”

“Sam,” she said behind him. “How do we escape?”

_I have to warn the Colonel_ , was Troy’s thought. _I can’t let him walk into this trap._ What Alexander was carrying in his head was too dangerous for him to get caught. Hell, the information he was carrying himself was too dangerous. “We just leave. I’ll wreck the radio.”

“Will they let us?” she breathed, coming up right beside him. 

He slid his arm around her waist still acting the loving husband. “We have to take a chance.”

Unexpectedly she gave him a slight peck on the cheek, then stepped away. “I will get my pistol.”

Troy went over to the suitcase and opened it. He methodically disabled the radio inside it, taking care that the sound didn’t carry if at all possible. His mind was racing now. 

The path was their best bet, but, if the Germans were there, they’d expect them. How had they been found out? Where was Yves and those wretched geese? And where the hell was Alexander? 

She came over and laid her hand on his shoulder. “We will look very silly if there aren’t any Boche.” 

“Yep,” he said with a grin. “But I’m not taking the chance.”

She nodded agreement. He rose, and picked up his coat. He could hide a pistol under the front of it, and they’d look like a couple just out for a walk. “Let’s go.”

It was unexpectedly quiet as they left. Yves wasn’t under his tree, and the geese were starting to stray down the path. They nearly reached the trees when the first Gestapo man stepped out of the tree, his machine gun pointed directly at them. 

Troy’s hand went to his gun, but behind him he heard heavy footsteps, and then a hand slammed between his shoulder blades, knocking him to his knees. He put both hands out to break his fall and the pistol fell out.

Gabrielle screamed, and turned. One of the three soldiers slammed the side of her face with his clenched fist and she staggered, falling over Troy, and sprawling on the ground. 

Troy rose to one knee, to find himself staring down the muzzles of several guns. The three men had reinforcements, and there were more in the woods from what he heard coming through the undergrowth. 

Two of the soldiers gripped him and held him securely, as two others picked up Gabrielle who looked a little dazed. They searched her roughly, and found her pistol. Troy tensed. He found a gun pressed against his side and froze.

The soldier whistled shrilly and Troy heard the sound of a truck. 

A perfect trap for them all. Where was Yves? Looking around he couldn’t see the boy. Had he betrayed Troy and Gabrielle? An officer clambered down from the truck. 

The guards who didn’t have their hands full of Troy and Gabrielle saluted, and the first man said, “This is the last of them, Hauptmann Lehr!”

“All of them?” the officer, Lehr, asked looking around. 

“According to the boy, yes,” the man replied. 

The boy? Yves? Had he betrayed them? 

“Where is the boy?”

The soldier shrugged. “Bring him out!” he called behind him. 

Troy’s jaw set. He had been interrogated before by the Gestapo, but never broken. He was sure he wouldn’t break this time; the price would be too high -- Rommel and the offer. Where was the colonel?

Lehr looked around into the woods as the soldiers dragged Yves out of the woods. The boy’s nose was broken, and he looked as if the men had beaten him badly.

“So this is all of them?” Lehr asked Yves.

The boy avoided Gabrielle’s eyes. “Oui.”

“All of them?” the officer repeated harshly. One hand reached out and grabbed the boy’s shirt, forcing him down on his knees. “Don’t lie to me!”

“Yves!” Gabrielle screamed.

“Shut her up,” Lehr said casually. One guard wound his hand in her hair, dragging her head back and she gave a cry of pain. Troy struggled, earning himself a hard kick in the ribs that made him gasp in pain. “Do not lie to me, boy! Where are the others?”

Yves began to cry, tears splashing through the blood on his upper lip. “No more!”

Troy wasn’t sure if he meant pain or the others. He kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want the German to know he was an American; that would lead to too many questions. More troops jumped out of the back of the truck. It was becoming quite a gathering. Lehr let go, and Yves crumpled in a heap. The officer looked at Troy and Gabrielle, and ordered, “Put them in the truck.”

“What about Yves?” she cried as she was dragged away. “Yves!”

The boy looked up, his face wet with tears. Lehr shrugged, and turned to the remaining troops. “Check the house. Make sure that you get the radio. And hang the boy from the rafters.”

She screamed and Troy struggled but they were bound and thrown in the back of the truck. Outside they heard Yves screaming as well, and the sound of laughter from the soldiers. 

_Well, I won’t have to tell the colonel what happened,_ Troy thought. _If he doesn’t get caught, he’ll find the body and just know. All I have to do is die before I betray Alexander and Rommel, and whoever else wants to kill Hitler. Damn!_

 

 ***

 

Alexander had blisters on his feet. No matter that the shoes were well broken in, and the socks darned, the last five miles of the hike in the sweltering heat made his feet swell, and rubbed his skin until it was raw. He wished he’d taken the shorter route as Troy had, but this one was safer in the long run. Beside it was more scenic walking beside the river.

A dead chicken swung from one hand as he strolled down the country lane. It was just past noon on an afternoon that promised to be perfect for a long snooze on a riverbank, maybe with a fishing pole as cover. If he wasn’t totally aware that the world was at war he would have thought it a day out of an Impressionist painting. Sunshine shone through the thick leaves of the trees, dappling the country path, and birds chased each other from bush to bush. The chicken would be tonight’s dinner while he tried to figure out exactly what he was going to tell London. Rommel wanted a truce. That was the best he had to offer. If they moved fast enough, the Allies could have this war over by Christmas. Wouldn’t that be a bit of fun?

This would be the most important message he ever sent.

He heard the truck before it came around the corner. The cylinders were running rough as if the engine needed a tune-up. He stepped out of the way, hunching over and looking like a man two decades older than his own forty-three years. 

The truck slowed and a soldier jumped out to accost him. Alexander held his hands up, dead chicken dangling from one. 

Then a Gestapo officer stepped down from the cab, and Alexander didn’t try to prevent himself from turning white. It was a normal reaction in France to being stopped by the Gestapo. 

“Who are you?” the officer asked briskly in French.

“Pierre Lanonde,” Alexander replied in the same language. “I am headed to my sister’s—“

“Papers!” The officer held out his hand, and Alexander fumbled one-handed inside his coat. 

He pulled out his carte d’identité, and his fiche de démobilization, his proof of being exempt from the forced labor of the Service du Travail Obligatoire, which sent Frenchmen to labor in Germany, and handed them over to the officer. They’d been forged by one of the finest counterfeiters in France, and Alexander knew that most of the stamps were real. He’d paid enough for them, -- and most of the creators were dead now. The other cards that the officer was rustling through were ration cards for meat, bread, tobacco and all the other restricted items. 

The officer eyed them carefully. “You were going to your sister’s?”

“ _Oui._ Janice lives miles from here but I should be there in time for her to cook this chicken for our dinner.”

“She lives in Giverny, eh? Tell me about this place!”

“The great painter, Monet, and his big house with gardens full of water lilies are there,” Alexander embroidered as fast as he could. This officer was obviously checking out his story. “My sister’s house is small, with a red-tiled roof. And her garden is full of roses and lilies.” He faked a sigh of envy. Luckily, he’d spent time in the town between wars and knew it like the back of his hand. 

“Hmm,” the officer said scoffing, scanning the papers carefully. “These seem to be correct, old man. But about that chicken. . . ”

With one hand, Alexander accepted back the papers and stuffed them in his pocket. He clutched his chicken in the other hand. “My dinner?”

“Give it to me,” the officer ordered. He licked his lips as he eyed the fowl.

Alexander clutched the scrawny bird to his chest. “But it is mine!”

“Do you want to end up like them?” the officer threatened, pointing to the back of the truck. “Take a look!”

A guard grabbed Alexander by the shoulder and dragged him to the back of the truck.

He reeled with the shock. Troy and Gabrielle were face-down on the dirty wooden truck bed lying entangled with Yves’ two dead geese. There was no sign of the boy. Gabrielle’s face was bruised, and she didn’t move since one of the soldiers in the back had the heel of his boot between her shoulder blades. Troy looked up. His expression didn’t change. 

“Who are they, _Herr Hauptmann_?” Alexander asked shaken pulling back against the guard’s hold.

The officer spat over the tailgate and hit Troy on the face. “French bastard spies. We caught them, hung the others. That’s what we’ll do to anyone who fights against us. You know them?”

Alexander shook his head mutely, his mind racing. This was about as bad as he could imagine. If Troy told the Gestapo about Rommel… no, Troy wouldn’t. He’d die first. Had he told Gabrielle? What did she know? What would she tell? Could she be broken?

“The chicken?” the officer said pointedly holding out his hand. 

Alexander surrendered the fowl wordlessly. The guard let him go and he stumbled to the side of the road out of their way. The officer got back into the cab as the guard swung into the back of the truck blocking Alexander’s view of the two captives. The truck drove away leaving the spy in a cloud of dust that made him choke.

Alexander waited until it disappeared around a bend before he headed down the road towards the farmhouse. He had to make sure the codebook and radio were destroyed, and then formulate a new plan to get the information to London. 

Damn, he had to work fast! All his instincts wanted to go after Troy and Gabrielle, and free them somehow, but he knew that the offer was more important. If Troy did talk, then not only was the offer dead, but so was Rommel, and that boded poorly for ending this war any time soon. 

_God help you, Sam, Gabrielle. God help us all._

 

***

 

Moffitt watched their contact, Arneaud, limp down the narrow road from Gallion-sur-Seine. The young man, crippled in his left leg which was why he was still in France and not in a German labor camp, hurried as if he had urgent news. 

Monique whistled, raised her hand, and waved. Arneaud headed towards her. 

The boy was barely twenty, Moffitt thought, and so desperate to be part of this war that he was doing the most dangerous civilian job he could find. His expression said that he was in awe of Gabrielle and Moffitt, and the Englishman knew that that awe was a dangerous emotion. 

Arneaud sank down panting against a rock, out of sight of the road. “Mademoiselle?”

“What is it?” she asked.

“There are more troops arriving, troops from the front. Hauptmann Lehr is complaining that he has sent his troops out to the farms near here to take as much of the food as they can find. The farmers in Gallion-sur-Seine are furious.”

“I’ll wager they are,” Moffitt said dryly, scanning the roadway. “Especially if they are paid in script.”

The boy nodded. “There have been many trucks up at the mill as well taking men out.” The Gestapo had taken over an old house with adjacent mill as their interrogation center. 

“Résistants?”

“Non. I think not,” Arneaud said in an uncertain tone. “I think that there were German troops in the trucks.”

“That makes that mill as dangerous a place to be as any,” Moffitt commented. “Monique, we need to leave.”

“Paul and Theorn are in there!” she said bitterly.

“They are probably dead. Even the Pére thinks they are dead. We need to meet up with Hitch—“ Moffitt cut himself off. Arneaud didn’t need any information that the Germans might extract from him.

“The Pére says that the troops are coming in on all the roads,” Arneaud said to them. “You may not be able to go anywhere. You must hide.”

Overhead they heard the roar of engines, and Moffitt squinted as he looked up. American fighters. No Germans to fight them. One banked and headed up the Seine, its partner following closely. They all heard the sound of gunfire. The plane must have spotted something in the road. They strafed anything that moved. 

“I am going to watch the mill!” Arneaud said breathlessly. 

“Don’t get caught,” Moffitt said seriously. “We don’t want them to know that we are around here.” 

“We can use any information but not if it will get you killed, _mon fils_ ,” Monique said laying her hand on his. The boy looked as if she’d just blessed him. 

_I want to be sick_ , Moffitt thought sourly. She’d known how to manipulate boys and men since North Africa. 

“You are planning something, Mademoiselle?” Arneaud asked eagerly.

She leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks. “Keep a good watch, comrade. We will soon free you all.”

“I hear a truck,” Moffitt remarked softly. 

Arneaud and Monique sank down while Moffitt didn’t move. He knew he was hidden among the trunks, and any motion might catch the attention of a driver or soldiers on the road. 

A truck drove by. In the rear truck two soldiers were visible through the open flaps. The vehicles disappeared around a corner.

“They think they are safe here,” Monique said angrily. “They take no precautions against the résistants.”

“Now’s not the time to dispute it. Maybe after we conclude our business, we should look at the base,” Moffitt suggested. He rubbed his face and felt the bristles of his unshaven cheeks. He wanted a hot bath and a shave. He hated looking unkempt. 

“ _Bon,_ ” Monique whispered in agreement. “It is time to go to the mill and kill all the Boche.”

_After we get the radio_ , Moffitt mouthed at her. _After we get in touch with London!_

 

***

 

Alexander carefully approached the farmhouse through the stand of trees. The thatch was smoldering as if a fire set hadn’t taken in the thick hay, but the place smelled of blood and urine. Where was Yves? Were the Germans still around?

They are probably still here, he thought. Where?

Probably inside the building awaiting anyone else who might have come home. He’d have to outwait them to see what the damage might be. 

He sank down in a gully between the roots of two giant oak trees, lying as flat as he could get, and watched the building. 

From behind him came the sound of feet shuffling through the fallen leaves of last fall and the sound of hard-soled boots. Alexander froze except for his hand that went to the knife in his belt.

Something under a bush caught his attention. 

A small brown rabbit huddled there trembling as it flicked its long ears back and forth. It shivered in fear, and Alexander knew exactly how it felt. If he acted, he might die – and the chance of peace would go with him. But if he was captured . . . that would be worse. 

So little friend, we’ll wait this out together, he thought, watching the rabbit and listening behind him. 

The boots went past him towards the courtyard, and then the soldier hailed inside. 

A pair of soldiers came outside, their guns held ready. The newcomer was an Unteroffizier, the equivalent of a non-commissioned officer, and the others obeyed his orders as he directed them to do another search of the buildings. Then they’d go back to the town.

Alexander watched the soldiers search the area, then meet outside the building a half-hour later. The Unteroffizier closed the door very carefully and the trio set off down the road away from the farmhouse. 

He didn’t move until the rabbit stopped shivering, and ears twitched forward. Its nose quivered. He didn’t have the heart to kill it though he was very hungry by now. They were comrades in peril, and they had both lived through it. 

The rabbit hopped away and Alexander crept down the hill at an oblique angle trying to stay away from the windows. Finally he slid up to the farmhouse and peered in a window.

Inside it was mostly dark except where faint bars of sunlight crossed the flagstones. Gabrielle’s torn coat was lying in a heap, and there was an overturned chair. He saw the radio had been smashed and, in the fireplace, ashes which looked as if they’d been combed. He’d lay a wager that Troy had destroyed the codebook in the fire. 

The shadows shifted as if something was moving, and he looked more closely. 

Yves had slowly strangled. His face was purple and bloated. His neck was at a strange angle – they must have finally pulled his legs to break his neck, killing him. 

Alexander fought the urge to be sick. He’d liked the boy’s courage and enthusiasm. Now he’d have to bury him somehow. He let his emotions sink into the back of his mind, and thought cold-bloodedly about what he was going to do next. 

He should bring Yves down from there. No one else would.

No . . . no one else would. So it was probably a trap. 

He looked at the boy, then noticed a thin wire that went from the rope up to the beam above. Following the wire, he saw a small bundle of dynamite and timers. 

A small trap for any of the _résistants_ who might feel they should give Yves an honest burial. I’d better leave. Where the devil do I go now?

He turned his back on the boy and walked into the forest. 

 

***

 

Larson walked into the communications center at La Roche-Guyon, and all the enlisted men stiffened and saluted. He acknowledged them. “Have you broken the latest British codes?”

“Ja,” said a corporal hurriedly, picking up a sheet of papers and waving them. “They have been trying urgently to reach one of their groups in this area but there is no reply.”

“There is no reply because the Gestapo picked up that group,” the lieutenant in charge broke in. 

Larson didn’t show that the information rocked him to his bones. “Where was this, Leutnant?”

The soldier tapped on a map near Gallion-sur-Seine. “There is a Gestapo base right here, on the river, Herr Hauptmann, under the command of Hauptmann Lehr. That is where all the Résistants are brought when they are captured.”

Larson noted that it was below La Roche-Guyon on the way to Paris. “And what happens to the Maquis when this Lehr is done?”

The men exchanged mystified looks. “They are Gestapo, Herr Hauptmann,” the lieutenant finally said. “Whatever happens to their prisoners, they do not tell us. They report to Berlin.”

“Of course,” Larson said reassuringly, though kicking himself mentally. He couldn’t let fear blind him to the danger in here. He had remained at the castle while Rommel went about his daily trips to the front. Larson was waiting for the message from Alexander which now was likely doomed. Were they all doomed along with it? “What a foolish question. What do you know about this group?" 

“We were told to note any messages coming in for them. Hauptmann Lehr is not sure he caught all the members, and whoever is left might try and contact the Amis. If he or she does, then we will be awaiting them,” the officer replied proudly. 

If we are still in France, Larson thought. Has the entire plan gone up in flames because of some stupid Gestapo maneuver? What has happened to Alexander and his man? What about Rommel? If the group has been picked up and talked, everyone’s dead, even back in Berlin. “A good plan. What else do you have for the general?”

“Here you are, sir,” the lieutenant proffered several telegrams. “And this one is for you from Berlin.”

Larson acknowledged it, and signed the log book stating that he’d taken the messages, then went up the winding stairs that led to the main castle. 

He went into the study and put the general’s messages on the desk, then went over to the sullenly burning embers of the fire, and poked at it. He placed another log, and blew on the hot remains until it caught fire on the dried wood, and the fire flickered back into life. 

Then he pulled out his message and read it. “Alisa doing fine but not yet recovered. Hope to see you by 20nd. Love, Mutter.” Larson sucked in his breath and let it out in a great sigh. The date was set for the assassination of Hitler. Soon he’d have to tell the general what was happening. He knew that Rommel was aware that something was in the air, but the general had kept himself out of the plot, or so Larson thought. None of the conspirators had ever said anything about Rommel being part of the inner circle. 

If the Allies do wish the truce, then the death of Hitler will convince them that we truly want peace, Larson thought. And Rommel is the only man that both sides will trust. I must find out what happened to Peter Alexander. Was he caught? 

He tossed the paper into the fire, waited for it to burn to ashes then smashed the ashes with a poker until they were dust. Then he went downstairs to get transportation to the Gestapo base at Gallion-de-Seine.

 

*** 

 

Sam Troy had been interrogated more than once by the Gestapo. The Gestapo had been taking him to Berlin when Troy first ran into Peter Alexander. 

But this time the Gestapo just might end up killing him. 

Not that it mattered in the long run to the war effort as long as he kept his mouth shut. He was glad that he hadn’t told Gabrielle about Rommel. If the woman broke, she couldn’t bring down the German general. But if she broke, she’d bring down the rest of the team, if anyone had escaped besides Alexander.

Cold-bloodedly, Troy knew he should try to get himself killed. The chance of rescue was infinitesimal. 

But somewhere in his heart of hearts, down buried beneath the practical was that slim fragment of hope that either the Americans would sweep down and free them all, or Alexander would pull his British rabbit out of a hat and save them both, or… that he would die.

They’d even taken away the cyanide tablet when they stripped him down to his shorts and thrown him in a cold cell with a flea-ridden mattress short of most of its stuffing. He scratched constantly; it was at least something to do. 

Two days had passed since their capture and Troy wondered what was happening to Gabrielle. He heard a woman screaming down the hall, but he wasn’t sure if it was her or not. The sound was raw and the laughter that followed brutal. He couldn’t stop his ears, but he hoped that whoever took this place made Hauptmann Lehr suffer in equal amounts. 

The tiny window near the ceiling showed nothing but a small square of sky, now clouded with fat black rain clouds. Around him the walls had scratched nessages from other prisoners, mostly in French. The stench from the hole in a corner used as a lavatory, and the smell of mold made him gag. Sunlight provided the only light into the cell. Nighttime was a black pit and he wondered what was rustling in the undergrowth. 

He heard the whine of an airplane engine, knew that Allied fighters and bombers flew overhead. He could tell the difference – his brother had been a combat pilot who was shot down six months before over Berlin. Troy had heard that his brother was a prisoner somewhere in Germany. At least least he was alive. Troy had wanted to see him again, but he knew that wasn’t likely now. 

Firing. Somewhere the planes were firing at the enemy. Or was it the Luftwaffe firing back? He didn’t know. Neither of the planes flew across his square of sky.

Then he heard the sound of boots coming down the hall, and he sat up on his pallet. Not without some pain; his arms ached from being stretched overhead as he hung on a hook, and his sides from where he’d been kicked, but there would be worse ahead. 

All he had to do was keep his mouth shut until he was rescued or was dead. Whichever came first. 

 

***

 

Hitchcock looked at Tully Pettigrew and grinned. His friend looked like any one of the German soldiers who had died in the retreat from the Normandy coast. He hitched the gun over his shoulder and returned Hitchcock’s glance with a restrained nod and a sparkle in his eyes. He was ready to go.

Two days earlier they’d buried their clothing and everything that could have identified them as Americans. Hitchcock for the hundredth time regretted getting the Fort Benning tattoo on his arm. It meant he couldn’t roll up his sleeves and it was getting hotter than hell as they trudged along. Black thunderclouds were amassing in the sky, and birds were quiet. It was ominously silent. 

There had been new orders before they left Allied territory. Luckily, it was on the way to meeting Moffitt so while Hitchcock chafed at the delay he knew better than to protest. 

They found the farmhouse exactly where General Wilson had said it would be. It looked abandoned, except for a crow that was sitting on the windowsill, cocking its head and peering inside. It rapped on the glass, then looked at them with a cold beady eye. It rapped again as if it was trying to get in.

Tully hissed under his breath and Hitchcock nodded grimly. The area was probably deserted if the crow was there but it didn’t hurt to scout it out. They separated and approached the building cautiously. 

The bird took flight as Hitchcock came up to the window and peered in. 

It was dark inside. He shifted trying to get a clear view. 

He saw a shadow on the window opposite, then Tully’s face. The other man had more light to see by, and he started back as if he’d been shocked. Tully beckoned to him to go around the front, and Hitchcock followed his wave, walking around the building. It was pretty clear it had been abandoned both by the Germans and the résistants. 

“What is it?” he asked softly as Tully came around the corner. “What’d you see?”

Craasssh! Above them was a thunderclap and a gust of wind sent the door flying open. Both men tensed, worried that it might be booby-trapped, but nothing exploded. Fat raindrops dampened their uniforms and they hastily stepped inside.

The stench hit Hitchcock even before he saw the hanging body. Two days in the heat without any way to let fresh air in had turned Yves’ face black, and the smell was enough to drive Hitchcock out into the rain until he caught his breath. Finally he wrapped a handkerchief around his nose and mouth and came back inside, soaked to the skin. 

Tully had walked around the body, picked up the woman’s coat that was lying on the floor, and laid it to one side. Hitchcock wondered what the hell had happened to everyone else who had been part of the group? Were their bodies lying in the forest maybe with a bullet in their backs, or broken necks? 

“Seems like we’re too late,” Tully said echoing Hitchcock’s thoughts. “Careful there. See the tripwire?”

Hitchcock nodded. The firelight danced off the wire around Yves’ rope. “Probably not the only one either, Tully.”

“They’ve probably left this whole place wired.” Tully looked around with suspicion written on his face. The ruined radio sat to one side, the soup kettle had been turned over and the soup dried on the stone flagstones. Ants swarmed around bits of vegetable. 

“Looks like the Krauts took them all,” Hitchcock commented pacing carefully around the room. “The Germans turned this place upside-down.”

“Figure we’ve got an answer for Wilson,” Tully said. “Whatever this was about, it’ll be a cold day in hell when it gets delivered.”

“I think… that we’d better find Moffitt,” Hitchcock said, eying Yves’ corpse once more, then turning his back. “Right after the rain stops.”

“Got any idea of where he might be?” Tully asked. 

“Yeah. We had a fall back position if we got separated. We’ll head – “

The thunder crashed, and the building shook. The body dropped, tripping the booby trap. 

Without a word both men fled outside heading for the trees. They dived into the undergrowth just as the farmhouse exploded behind them sending walls and thatch, and bits of the body flying. The ground rocked and a huge gout of flame went up.

A few minutes later, Hitchcock cautiously raised his head and peeked around. The rain hadn’t stopped the fire from spreading from the house to the parched dried trees around them. The leaves were catching fire. 

Tully looked up from where he was lying, his face caked with mud and leaf mold. He got to his knees. “Hell, we gotta get out of here!” 

They staggered into the forest. Even after a half-mile they could smell the scent of Yves’ funeral pyre. The driving rain was cold and hard but it was better than where they had been. They’d just keep going and hope to find some shelter before they were washed into the river. 

Then they’d call in the failure of the mission when they reached the safe haven. Wherever, whatever that group was, it was too late for them. They had to find Moffitt and the others. 

 

***

 

Major Hans Dietrich was wet all the way down to his skin. He doubted that falling in the nearby river would make him any wetter. The thunderstorm had broken an hour before, sweeping across the landscape, causing the river to overflow its banks and slop across the roads. The rain was still coming down so hard that he couldn’t see anything out the windshield.

Well, at least that meant the RAF and the American fighters were grounded. But then again so was he – his staff car was bogged down in mud. He regretted leaving his base because now not only was he stuck in the mud but with night coming on, he might drown. 

“According to the map there is a village several miles ahead called Gallion-de-Seine,” said his aide. Leutnant Felix was covered with mud. He had been shoving the staff car and slipped, landing face down in the mud. “And there is a Gestapo headquarters a half-mile away, in an old farmhouse on a hill by the river.”

Dietrich sniffed in disgust at the thought of taking refuge with the Gestapo. Well, he was getting nowhere here, and the Gestapo probably would have some kind of communications which meant his information could be coded and transmitted. They could also get food for his men and dry clothes. Then again, he’d have to sleep in the same building with the Gestapo. 

“Herr Major?” Felix asked uncertainly. 

“Ja, Leutnant,” Dietrich sighed and wiped rain off his face. “We will march to the village and the Gestapo. Leave the car behind. We will come back for it tomorrow.”

“It might not be here,” Felix protested waving his hand towards the stranded vehicle. “I will stay with it, Herr Major, and make sure that it is safe.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dietrich snapped. “No one could steal it in this rain!”

“Ja, but when it dries out, it is a target for thieves,” Felix replied obstinately and crossed his arms.

Dietrich thought he looked ridiculous, so muddy that he looked like a clay figure. Why had he been burdened with this child? His belief in Dietrich bordered on hero worship, and it showed on his freckled face, and soaked red hair. “Very well then, you stay. I will take the men with me.”

Felix saluted. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler.”

It took only a few minutes to order the men to follow him, and they followed willingly enough as they marched towards the village. It was farther than it had looked on Felix’s map, and Dietrich was furious though he didn’t show it to the guards who challenged him at the gates of the farmhouse. It had taken two hours to go the five miles and he was now tired and soaked, and the men were staggering.

While the guards checked his papers, and called up to the base, he looked around.

The rambling farmhouse he could barely see through the rain had been built roughly two hundred years before, but redecorated about fifty before with faux gargoyles and lead waterspouts that dripped into ornate planters. It was a mishmash of architectural styles that jarred the senses. He could hear the Seine close by and, by squinting, he saw the outlines of a waterwheel next to a building by the river. That must be a mill. Behind the farmhouse were tall trees bent under the fierce rain. 

He saw that there was a small building to one side of the farmhouse, and wondered if that was where the troops were kept or the prisoners. Must be the troops -- Dietrich knew from the past that the interrogations were likely in the basements or dungeons. Were there prisoners there now? Were they French or English or even a German who might be turned traitor? Would their information or their lives matter in the great scheme of things? Nothing was going to stop the Allied armies. 

Several minutes later, he was escorted up the walk to meet with a Hauptmann Lehr who was in charge.

He came to greet them at the door. Behind him, Dietrich saw lighted lamps and wax candles, and a dining room with china and crystal glasses. A steward was bustling around laying another place. Ah, civilization again. 

“Major Dietrich?” Lehr asked after he led them in. 

Dietrich returned the salute. “I have to ask for your consideration, Hauptmann. My men are all soaked, and need food.”

“But of course, Major. I have some excess clothing as well for you to change in though I’m afraid no appropriate uniform,” Lehr said, eyeing Dietrich’s clothing. 

“I’m sure you have some extra dry clothing that would be appropriate,” Dietrich said. He hoped it wasn’t a Gestapo uniform.

“Gustave!” Lehr called and the steward dropped the plate in his hand and walked quickly over. “Please take the Major upstairs and provide him with clothing. I will have Leutnant Paul take care of your men.” Another of Lehr’s aides, a slight man with the ice cold eyes of a killer, nodded and led the other men outside to the enlisted barracks. 

Dietrich followed Gustave upstairs wondering who else was invited to dinner. There were three places at the table. 

Upstairs he toweled himself dry and wrapped a towel around his narrow waist, then went into the bedroom. There was one small candle by the bed, and the curtains were pulled tight. Not a ray of light would escape. Lying on the old four-poster bed, where the quilt smelled of mothballs, was fresh clothing from undershorts to a new shirt. Dietrich avoided the shorts. They might look clean but they weren’t German issue so they might be from a prisoner. That was enough to turn his stomach. Not many prisoners escaped from the Gestapo – the owner of the shorts was probably dead or deported to a labor camp in Germany. But the worn white shirt fit over his broad shoulders, and the black pants were even a little loose so he fastened them with the suspenders and eyed his reflection in the tall mirror opposite the bed. His hair was untidy and he brushed it back. 

He looked tired and felt it. Was there gray among his dark hair? He wished he were back in North Africa where his hair had been bleached to gold and there weren’t as many lines in his face. That was a lifetime ago and he felt every second of passing time like a bullet weighing him down.

Walking downstairs, he saw the candles were few and far between, shrouding the paintings that hung on the walls in shadow. All that could be deciphered were white ruffles around the necks. Portraits from the late 1700s? How were they still here? Obviously minor painters or they would have been sent to Germany. Dietrich could smell roasting fowl and he headed downstairs. 

Lehr turned to greet him, one hand holding a carafe of brandy. “I’m glad you can join us, Major! We are starting with French brandy.” He poured the amber liquid into a crystal snifter and held it out. 

The other dinner guest turned and raised his own snifter in a salute to Dietrich. His uniform was untouched by mud, or even war wear from the gloss, but he had the insignia of a captain in the War Office which meant he probably outranked the major in real power. He watched Dietrich warily over the lip of his glass as if he recognized him. 

Dietrich accepted the glass and sniffed appreciatively at the fumes before tasting. Whoever had had the farmhouse before Lehr had had a good wine cellar. Dietrich wondered how much was left. 

Lehr must heading back to Germany soon; otherwise he probably wouldn’t be sharing this liquid with such a liberal hand. 

He saw the officer was eyeing his clothes in puzzlement. He met the man’s eyes and smiled sheepishly. “I tramped four miles in the mud.”

“It is still raining,” Lehr boomed. “I hope the river doesn’t wash away the mill!”

“Does it still run?” Dietrich asked.

“Sometimes,” Lehr said with a shrug. “I make it run when I want to. It is within my security perimeter so it sits idle most of the time.” 

“What happened to the miller?” Dietrich asked.

“He worked with the Maquis,” Lehr replied. “They had quite a good network here when I arrived.”

“But not now,” the officer said. “I am Hauptmann Heinrich Larson.” 

“Major Hans Dietrich. I am happy to meet you.”

“Hauptmann Larson is from Berlin,” Lehr said cheerfully. 

“Currently I am working with the Feldmarshall,” Larson added with a slight edge of reproof. “Far from Berlin.”

“Dinner!” Lehr called as his steward came to the door. “Tonight we are having goose for dinner.”

“Goose?’ Dietrich asked following him, glass in hand. He saw Larson pick up the carafe of brandy and carry it with him. Did the man plan to get drunk tonight? “Where did you find a goose, Hauptmann?”

“I found the local résistants were using two geese for warning people,” Lehr replied with a lopsided smile. “My men captured them, and the geese.”

“But we’re only eating the geese?” Larson asked in a dry tone. “Congratulations on capturing the résistants.”

“I am aware of all their movements but I waited until I could capture all of this group,” Lehr boasted as they sat down. “That cell is finished.”

“Interesting?” Larson purred. “What tipped you off to them?”

“I used my radio trucks to pinpoint their location. My men watched carefully until the leader returned, and then they arrested them all.” Lehr shrugged. “It was simple.”

Dietrich’s mouth watered as the roast goose was set in the middle of the table. There were browned potatoes around it, and somewhere Lehr had found fresh plums that sat in a porcelain bowl from an earlier century. He missed part of the conversation as the bird was carved and served, and only turned in when Larson asked, “Then you keep your prisoners here? So close by to the fighting?”

Lehr shrugged. “I turn over the information to Berlin and they say either send the prisoners to Berlin or send them to the labor camps. I am simply doing my job.”

“The edge of the battle zone is closer now than it was a week ago,” Larson commented. He turned to Dietrich. “How would you say it was going, Major?”

“We are fighting to the last man,” Dietrich said after he swallowed a mouthful of goose. “But the place to have stopped them was on the beaches.”

“Yes, it was a pity that they broke through,” Lehr said with a touch of regret. “The barriers didn’t hold long, did they?”

Dietrich eyed him with suspicion. Was that an implicit criticism of Rommel? “Regretfully no. But the fighting is still holding them in Normandy.”

“What do think will happen?’ Larson asked seriously. “When will they break through to Paris?”

“Never. I am sure that Paris will be a pile of rubble by the time the Amis fight through,” Lehr commented. He cut himself a large piece of goose, and waved it in the air. “The Fuhrer would insist on that!”

With a trace of regret, Dietrich nodded. He had to agree even if he loved Paris for its beauty. “It will be a long time until they break through. Our men fight for Germany.”

“And Rommel,” Larson commented. He lifted his snifter. “To the Feldmarshall!”

The other responded in the same fashion. 

After downing most of the brandy, Larson poured a little more into his glass, then offered Dietrich the bottle. “More?”

Dietrich shook his head. “Not tonight, sir. I must be awake tomorrow early to retrieve my car.”

“Where are you headed, Major?” Lehr asked. 

“To see the general,” Dietrich said. “In fact, I need to send a message to him.”

“I am afraid that the lines are down,” Lehr replied seriously. Then he grinned. “For once because of the weather, not the résistants!”

“Can it wait till morning?” Larson asked. “I have a car and can take you to La Roche-Guyon myself.”

“Danke, Hauptmann, but I have left a man with my car and must go back for it,” Dietrich said with regret. “If you can take my information back with you, that I would appreciate.”

Larson nodded. 

They finished half the goose, all the potatoes, and sat back enjoying the plums. 

Larson swirled the remains of the brandy in his snifter, then flicked his gaze to Lehr. “So you broke the Resistance in this area, Hauptmann?”

Lehr had had more to drink than either Dietrich or Larson, and it showed in a slight slurring of his voice. “Yes, indeed. We have them in the dungeon right now.”

“Really?” Larson said with slight curiosity. “Who are they?”

Lehr shrugged. “A man and a woman. I believe her name was – is Gabrielle Marchand, and he won’t tell us his. But I will find it out.”

“Only one man, then,” Larson mused. “A small group for the Resistance.”

“Oh, there were others but we caught them before they reached the house. I…shipped them to the camps,” Lehr said catching himself. 

Executed them more likely, Dietrich thought through a blur. The brandy and the effect of a full stomach was making him sleepy. He missed Larson’s next statement, but was roused by Lehr’s saying, “If you wish to see them, Hauptmann, then we can visit them now. Major, would you like to come along?”

Dietrich didn’t want to visit the dungeons. He wanted to go to sleep. “I… think not, Hauptmann Lehr. If possible, I would like to take my leave and get some rest.”

Lehr nodded. “I understand. A fighting man would not be interested in my techniques. Gustave will help you any way he can, Herr Major.”

“Then let’s go,” Larson urged pushing back from the table. “I am very curious about this.”

Dietrich wondered why. Was the man a ghoul? “Thank you, Hauptmann. I shall see you before I leave in the morning.”

The two officers left, and Dietrich eyed the last dregs of brandy in his glass, then tilted it so the liquor ran down his throat. “Good night.”

He followed Gustave upstairs to the bedroom where he stripped off his borrowed clothes and fell into the bed. In a few minutes he was asleep.

 

***

Peter Alexander had spent the last two days avoiding German patrols, and eating off the land. Luckily the early apples were ripe enough for a meal, but he was getting cramps from the raw fruit. He was also soaked to the skin by the torrential downpour. It had taken him two days to reach his destination. 

Yves’ family sent him to the country to keep him safe on a farm where he would be regarded as a farm worker necessary for the war effort, not sent to Germany. Another part of the reason Yves had been sent away was because one of his cousins had been shot as a resistant, and the whole family threatened. So the Maquis was active in the area. All Alexander had to do was make contact and somehow convince them that he was a British officer, not a German spy. 

Gallion-sur-Seine, downstream from a bigger town named Gallion, perched on the banks of the Seine looking like a postcard from a pre-War vacation brochure. Most of the buildings look like they had been there for centuries except for a century-old railroad depot that had been rebuilt and embellished with the flourishes of the early 1900s. The uneven roads were bricks or cobblestone, and the streets rutted from what must be centuries of horse-drawn carts or carriages. 

On the outskirts were many small houses, all silent and dark, as if inhabited by ghosts that in many cases they might have been. All of France knew what happened to villages who lent aid to the résistants – the Germans rounded up the inhabitants and shot a selection of them, or maybe all. No farmer would answer a knock on the door unless the command was in German, and then they’d open it in fear.  
He passed a church with a Norman tower and adjacent graveyard, then reached the outskirts of the town. Here there were signs of occupancy. Signs in the dark windows declared there wasn’t any merchandise to sell, or advertised war bonds against a drawing of a huge factory chimney belching steam. The windows of the boulangerie were dark and he couldn’t even smell the bread. It looked abandoned. A list of posted curfew hours dangled crookedly in the window.

Alexander knew he was on the very edge of curfew and he had to find Yves’ parents. Turning down narrow streets he wound his way to the heart of the town. The square was bordered with chestnut trees and on one edge was the stone memorial to the dead of a war only two decades before. A fountain splattered water into its basin. 

He dodged back into a doorway. German troop trucks lined two sides of the square, the drivers missing. Maybe they had decided to take refuge inside one of the small cafes that dotted the square. 

He retreated up the street into the pounding rain, then around a corner to finally see a street sign he recognized. 

Yves had been disgusted that his town had renamed his street after a former prefect of the police, Jean Chiappe, and he’d been quite vocal about it. 

Alexander climbed Rue Jean Chiappe. The house of Yves’ family should be at the top. He slogged upward wishing he’d had a chance to shave. He might not look as disreputable as he thought he did but he couldn’t believe it. 

He came out into another small square set around a small a nineteenth-century water fountain. Water spurted from the flower basket held by a stone maiden. Alexander scooped up some water, sucked it down, then used his wet hand to brush his hair back out of his eyes, and headed for number 15. 

He rapped on the door of a small house on the outskirts of the town several times before it opened a crack. The woman who eyed him was obviously from Yves’ family from the shape of her eyebrows to her pointed chin. “Oui?”

“I am here from Yves,” Alexander replied urgently in French. 

She sharply drew in a breath. “Yves? Who--Where is he?”

“I must speak with you, Madame,” Alexander said simply. 

“Come inside.” She opened the door wide enough for him to come in, then shut it behind him.

The narrow hallway was almost totally black and Alexander hesitated, his eyes adjusting, his soaked clothing dripping around him. Faint gray light came from under a doorway to one side. He could see a worn carpet, probably Turkish, running down the hallway before ending at a closed door. The air was stuffy, and he felt sweat roll down his neck. The house smelled of cabbage, probably cooked seven days a week, the stink of the thin edge of poverty. 

“This way,” she said, leading him down the hallway.

The room was crowded with knick-knacks and faded rugs. The furniture was heavy and solid, carved by an earlier era to last forever, and the covers of the chairs still had tassels. Dim photographs sat on a small wooden table, and there was a bouquet of summer flowers in a vase on the top of the dusty piano. A sharp-edged letter opener lay beside the hand of the elderly man who sat bolt upright in a hard-backed chair.

Alexander politely ignored the opener as he greeted the man. “Bonsoir, Monsieur.”

“Who are you?” the man asked harshly. 

“Grand-pére! You say you come from Yves? What about Yves?” the woman asked urgently.

“Quiet, Helene! Who are you?”

Alexander hesitated looking from man to woman. “Yves…”

Her lip quivered and a tear streaked down her cheek. “Is he dead?”

There was no way to dress it up. “Oui.”

“Yves…” the elderly man said softly, painfully. “Why?”

Helene sobbed. “Where is he?”

“Where?” Alexander did not want them going to the farmhouse, booby-trapped as it was. “Miles from here.”

“We must bring him back here to be buried,” the elderly man stated. His eyes were bitter as he eyed Alexander. “Did he die because of you? Was he with you?”

“Grand-pére, does it matter?” she wailed. 

Alexander’s hair rose. Was the old man trapping him? Was he going to give him to the Germans? “I found the body,” he replied politely. “He talked with me about his home in the past so I knew where to come.”

“He was too young,” Helene mourned. “So young and rash.”

That didn’t match with what Alexander remembered of the boy but his family might know him better. He wouldn’t tell them about Gabrielle. A schoolboy’s crush was better left unsaid under the circumstances. 

“I am looking for his friends,” Alexander said urgently. “The ones who are here still."

The old man shook his head. “Get out! Get out!”

Helene sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across her face. “Come with me!” she whispered to Alexander.

“Don’t give him food! We need the food!” the elderly man shouted. “Helene!”

She tugged on Alexander’s arm. “Come on. He doesn’t want to lose anyone else. My brother, his wife, the sons, Yves…come on!”

She led him down the corridor to the small backyard. Clotheslines crisscrossed the small area, and Alexander followed her hunched over wary of the cords. At the far end was a small shed, then a road with a stone wall that fenced it off from the neighbors. He could see the back of the church. 

She turned, putting her hands on the lapels of his coat so he couldn’t move. “Yves died bravely?”

Alexander nodded. “Very.”

“Grand-pére will never tell the Germans – he does not see that well anymore, and since the boys were swept up in the Service du Travail Obligatorie, we have never seen them again…”

“What about Yves’ parents?” Alexander asked. 

“They were arrested by the Gestapo a year ago and we don’t know if they are alive or dead. Maybe they were sent to Germany…” Neither of them believed it. The couple was likely as dead as Yves, and buried in an unmarked grave.

She gave him a tiny peck on the cheek and he was aware of how numb and chilled he was when he could barely feel it. “Thank you for telling me. Go see Pére Mathieu up at the church. Hurry before the clock strikes. The Germans will shoot you if they find you out after curfew.”

“This Pére Mathieu, he knows Yves’ friends?” Alexander asked urgently. 

“Tell him what you told me and stay there. He will help you,” she said simply. 

Alexander hated this but had no choice. There was no other way of reaching the front lines, and it was a risk just being outside. He nodded grimly. “North?”

She pointed out the small gate that led to the garden of the house next door. “Through the graveyard, and the small church. Pére Mathieu lives there. Hurry!” She hurried back inside while he climbed over the fence and headed down the road.

It was almost completely dark when he reached the parish church. It was farther than he had expected from seeing the square tower from the back of Helene’s house, and there were no lights to help him. He couldn’t find the gate through the wall, so he finally vaulted over the low stone wall, and instantly landed in freshly-turned soil, stumbling to land on hands and knees. He looked around getting his bearings. 

Lightning lanced across the sky and he saw the turned piles of dirt that crowded the graveyard had wood crosses. Thunder grumbled loudly and he knew there was more lightning coming. He had to get inside. 

Why are there so many fresh graves here? Who has this Pére been burying?

His stomach grumbled. He rose and walked cautiously through the graveyard, trusting the flashes of lightning to show him the way. He could hear the burble of the nearby river. There was a small building behind the church and tower that probably housed the priest’s automobile if he had one or, Alexander sniffed, more likely a donkey or a horse from the scent of manure from a small garden. 

He rapped on the door of the church and could hear the sound echoing inside. Scared of being caught by any roaming patrol that might hear him, he tried turning the huge door ring and to his surprise the door opened. 

He stepped inside and let the door close behind him. 

Blackness. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness. To one side was a set of candles, one lit, the others dark, and a dim light from the front of the church. The light dimly illuminated the wooden pews and carving on the stone walls. 

He wondered what to do now. Where was this Pére who he was supposed to see?

Having just made it safely indoors, Alexander didn’t really want to go outside and try checking the other buildings. There might be a way from inside here to the tower at least. 

He cautiously went forward, feeling his way. 

“Who are you, my son?” a deep voice asked in front of him. 

Alexander’s hand went to the knife in his belt. “Where are you?”

In the silence he heard the sound of rain, hard-riving rain, against the narrow glass windows, lined with paper or cloth, along the upper part of the church. 

The priest struck a match and lit the small votive candle. The tiny light was minuscule in his huge hand. “Come with me. If the Germans see the light they will break the windows of my church.” 

“Pére Mathieu?” 

“Oui.” The priest was a tall man in his forties whose size gave him the look of a Viking. He wore a slightly too small, worn black cassock. “You seek sanctuary in my church?”

“Sanctuary…. I am looking for someone to help me, yes. Helene in the village -- ”

“Come!” Pére Mathieu said impatiently. “It is dangerous here. If the Germans see the light, they will kill you.”

Not you? Alexander followed reluctantly reminding himself that he had come of his own will. 

The priest led him down into the crypt which was probably below the bell tower from the direction they were walking. Finally the priest stopped and set the small candle down at the feet of a stone carving of a knight. The light was shielded from the cracked windows along one side. 

“What are you looking for?” Pére Mathieu asked turning towards him. 

“Helene said you’ll help me find the friends of Yves’ parents.”

“Yves is a good boy. “

Alexander winced. “Was.”

Pére Mathieu’s face fell. “Was? Ah, non.”

“Father…Pére, it is important that I find – “

“The Resistance?” the priest replied. “They are who you are seeking?”

“Yes,” Alexander replied baldly stepping closer, his hand on the hidden knife. “I have to find them.”

“And you think I know where they are?” 

“I have to reach them,” Alexander replied. His stomach growled again. He realized that it had been a long time since he’d had anything to eat. “Can you help me?”

The priest studied him. “You are hungry?”

Alexander smiled. “Yes, I am hungry.” A second later, he realized he’d made a massive mistake. The priest shoved him so hard that he fell back onto the stone floor of the crypt. The man was gone before Alexander could scramble up. With a sickening sense of despair, he heard the heavy wood door crash shut. 

He slammed his hands on the splintery wood, and shoved. Not a chance in Hades of it moving. He was locked in.

HELL! Oh, bloody hell. He smashed the door once more, then slid until he landed on the clammy stone, wondering if he’d just lost the war. His stomach rumbled again, and Alexander cursed. He gathered himself to stand up and look for another exit when the candle flickered out leaving him in the pitch dark.

_Damnation!_

 

***

 

“I don’t know why you want to see them. Let’s go upstairs and drink more brandy,” Lehr protested drunkenly as he lead Larson down the narrow stairs to the dungeons. “Résistants are no different than any other prisoners!”

“We can enjoy our brandy more thinking that we’re free and they are not,” Larson urged feeling more like he was sick to his stomach. It had been hard to convince Lehr to show off his prisoners, and the spy had drunk more liquor than he drank in a month back in Berlin. It would be worth it though if he settled once and for all whether or not Alexander was caught or still free. 

Lehr returned the salutes of the guards, then led Larson down the hallway. “Most of the cells are… crowded but I will send some of them to the camps tomorrow or later, and the others…” He shrugged in almost a Gallic fashion. “But here is the latest ones.”

Larson peered through the mesh in the small window that had been cut in what was obviously a century-old door. The room had probably held farm implements from the shadows on the wall. There was a small can to one side to be used for waste, but his eyes were caught by the brown-haired woman, who was sleeping against the wall. She was sitting on a torn mattress, and from the shadows on her torso and arms, had been beaten and otherwise mistreated.

He didn’t know her, and didn’t care. “This is the only one?”

“No! Just one of them,” Lehr said with a sneer, and the woman’s eyes opened. She looked dazed. “She has told us what she knew, but it is the other one that won’t talk to us!” he slammed closed the hatch over the window. “This way.”

Larson followed to the door at the end of the hallway. “What are behind these other doors?” he asked seeing marks that looked like someone had been dragged. 

“Interrogation rooms. We question them down here so the others know what is happening,” Lehr said cheerfully. “Works every time.”

“Except this time,” Larson asked. “Who is this?”

Lehr scowled. “He won’t tell us but she called for Alexander, so he must be this Alexander.”

Larson felt sick to his stomach. He hoped the Gestapo man hadn’t seen it on his face. “Alexander?”

“Ja. But he won’t tell us,” Lehr said opening the hatch. “Here look.”

Larson smelled water and the dank odor of a drain, then lightning lit the room outside the tiny window. In that flash of brilliance he saw a man sitting, hands around his knees on a folded mattress amid an inch or so of icy water. The rain was pouring in the window in a steady stream as if one of the downspouts had been directed to flood the dungeon. 

The man had looked up the next time there was a flash, and Larson recognized Sam Troy. Troy recognized him, but drooped his head, resting his brow on his knees, not betraying Larson. 

Weak with relief, Larson stepped back. “He looks like a stubborn man. You say he hasn’t talked at all?”

“Nein. We have been beating him, the usual, you know, but he will not talk.”

“What will happen if he doesn’t talk?” Larson asked. 

Lehr shrugged, slamming shut the window. “I will see what kind of information I still need, and maybe I will send him to a labor camp though I do not know if he is worth it.” 

“If he isn’t?”

“Then I’ll handle him like I will the woman. We killed all the rest of their group. Now let us go upstairs and go back to the brandy!”

Larson followed feeling despair. If the rest of the group was dead, then the message was lost and he and Rommel were running out of time. He wasn’t going to tell the general that -- Rommel had enough to worry about. There was still a chance that Lehr could be wrong also, and the Englishman was still alive. Larson clung to that hope with a death grip. 

 

***

 

Moffitt and Monique hadn’t been able to leave the hillside. The omnipresent trucks drove up and down the road, making movement dangerous in daylight even after that last storm. 

What about Hitch? They had to leave since they were a day away from where he was supposed to meet them. 

Monique sat out on a tree limb, her slim legs wrapped around the bark, watching the guards with a painful intensity. Was she remembering her old lover, Jean-Claude? He had died in the Gestapo’s hands. Did she want revenge?

Almost certainly, Moffitt thought ruefully. My brother died because of the Germans as well, but I can’t take it personally anymore. It had hurt like someone had scraped raw his heart those first few days, and he had nearly gotten his friends killed, but he’d overcome it and gone on. Monique had never reached that point – she kept the memory of Jean-Claude and his death, probably in silent stoic fortitude, though suspiciously the other members of the group had been picked up within days of his capture, as an icon for her to follow. Of course she was the only survivor. 

The memory and Vladimir Lenin were her only role models. His notions on the equality appealed to her. Moffitt had heard that lecture more than once in the last month, and if Lenin hadn’t already been dead, he would have killed the Russian himself.

She slid back careful not to overly disturb the leaves and climbed down out of the tree. Making her way carefully towards him, he saw that her shirt was soaked with perspiration.

She was an attractive young woman and Moffitt was uncomfortably aware of it for a second. 

Then she opened her mouth, and his attraction died. “I counted five trucks inside the farmhouse walls.”

“Five? What do they have planned that would need that many trucks?” He stood up, realizing that his clothes were sticking uncomfortably. 

She shrugged. “Maybe they will take the farmhouse stone by stone back to Germany?”

“Let’s check with the Pére. Maybe he has – “

“Duck!”

Moffitt crouched, pulling her down as another truck rumbled by. It had just gone out of earshot when German soldiers marched up the road, their boots muddy from walking, and their coats unfastened in the morning humidity. They carried their weapons ready to shoot – these were combat troops. 

“Mon Dieu,” she murmured. “What do we do?”

“Wait,” Moffitt whispered back, “until they pass. Then we get out of here!”

Their reprieve came sooner than he thought it would. A pair of fighters, maybe the ones from the morning, came out of the clouds and swooped down on the Germans, their guns chattering. Men fell out of the columns with a speed that belayed their exhausted condition, and hid in the trees and the rocks. 

An anti-aircraft gun fired from the roof of the farmhouse, and the planes soared upward out of reach. The gun kept firing, and then there was a crash. One of the planes wobbled, broke up in the air, and the pieces came smashing down in the river and the fields just beyond. 

The Germans cheered. 

Moffitt grimaced. The pilot had just taken his last flight. 

“At least he killed some of the Boche,” Monique said with grudging approval. “He is a hero.”

“He’s a damned fool and I’m sure his squadron leader won’t approve,” Moffitt contradicted her. 

She waved at the scene. “Look at the dead.”

“Yes. And one more over there,” he pointed. “We can’t get to Hitchcock, Monique. Let’s go to the Pére and see if he has any other information.”

She stared at him, daring him to make her, then suddenly shrugged. “A good idea.”

“Right,” Moffitt muttered. “Let’s get a move on. Maybe he has some breakfast.”

 

***

Alexander had been using his knife to chip away at the cement at the crypt’s window when the door was shoved open. 

In the Pére’s hand was a napkin which bulged. The smell of fresh bread wafted out, making Alexander’s mouth water. The priest put down a bottle of wine, cork already pulled. A bucket with a top hung from the same hand. 

“What are you doing with me?” Alexander demanded in a harsh voice, the knife held ready. In a second he could flip it, and send it right through the priest’s heart. 

“Eat, drink,” the priest advised. 

“It’s almost dawn.”

“The Germans came last night.”

Alexander tensed. “The Germans?”

“Lost troops. Tired, cold and needing sanctuary. I had to give it to them.”

“How long are you going to keep me here?” Alexander demanded. 

“You wished to contact the Resistance. I am doing it,” Pére Mathieu replied ambiguously. He set down the bucket and the wine, then put the napkin with them. 

“You know them, then?”

Pére Mathieu shrugged, the faded black cloth straining across his broad shoulders. One seam was split on his shoulder. “I know them all.”

Alexander wagered he did. If he had been tending to this little flock for the last several years, he must know the Germans as well as he knew his fellow Frenchmen. “And when will they be here?”

“Maybe soon. Maybe later. Eat your bread and drink the wine.” He stepped out, and pushed the door shut. Alexander heard the thump of a wood bar being put back in place. 

The Englishman pulled the napkin over, and without untying the knot, he pulled out a piece of the bread and wolfed it down. His fingers went in for more, and ran into cheese. He licked his dirty fingers, and then unwrapped the bread, and brie and settled down to eat. The wine washed it down. 

Finishing the food, he crumpled up the linen, stuffing it in his pocket. He stretched, and picked up the bucket and opened the top. 

It smelled of urine. At least he had a chamber pot. He replaced the lid and set it down. 

Circling the crypt, he noticed that it had no other exit than the door and the window. That was logical – who would be leaving the crypt? Despite his hopes, he knew that lean as he was, he couldn’t get out the window without taking out all the glass. 

Was the priest really going for the résistants? Were the Germans really upstairs? What could he do? Nothing but work on the window. He sat down beside the tomb and began to translate the inscriptions on the side from Latin to English.

It made him sleepy. He crawled to the other side, away from the window, and fell asleep.

 

***

 

Dietrich saw it had become a wonderful morning. The sky was clear, and the sun bright, and the flowers and trees looked like they were grown in the garden of Eden. He wished he could go hiking or anything else other than going back down the road to where his car was waiting.

“Major, you are leaving?” Lehr asked coming out just as Dietrich reached the front door. “No breakfast?”

“I have already broken my fast,” Dietrich said politely. He saw that Lehr’s eyes were red. He must have a terrible headache. Where was the other man? “The bacon was excellent.”

“You should stay for lunch,” Lehr said. “I have pate – “

“I must return to my men,” Dietrich said politely. 

“Ah, your car! I had forgotten. At least let me send you down with one of the trucks,” Lehr offered. “Leutnant!”

Dietrich saw several trucks loaded with wounded men ready to leave. They were going his way. “Thank you, Hauptmann.” Dietrich stepped down the stone stairs, Lehr beside him. “That was a fine dinner last night, Hauptmann Lehr.”

“Thank you.” 

Lehr held open the door as Dietrich climbed inside, the Leutnant getting in the drivers seat. “Have a good trip back to the front, Major. Heil Hitler!” 

Dietrich reluctantly saluted, then pulled the door shut. He disliked the man more every second. 

It only took fifteen minutes to reach his stranded car. Reaching it, he saw his adjutant was arguing with a Feldwebel. The sergeant’s men stood around bored or exhausted, their stained clothing showing that they hadn’t reached any cover before the storm.

“Bitte, Leutnant,” he said to the driver, who saluted. Dietrich climbed down and stood back. The truck rumbled down the road to the railroad station where it would unload its cargo of wounded men to go back to Germany. 

“What is happening?” Dietrich asked. Everyone saluted except two exhausted soldiers slumped by the side of the road. “How is the car?”

Felix waved to the car. “It has two punctures, Major, and only one spare tire. And the mud is up to the bumper. I need their help to get it out of the mud.”

“Major, my men have been fighting for the last month,” the Feldwebel interrupted, too tired to have his usual respect for officers. “We have had no food, no clean water, nothing. And he is insisting we do more work for nothing!” 

Dietrich sympathized with the soldiers. “He is right, Felix.”

“Herr Major!”

“We will get some other help back in the town,” Dietrich said crisply. “It will do us no harm to walk to… what was the name of the town?”

“Gallion-sur-Seine, sir.”

“Gallion-sur-Seine. Feldwebel, there should be some food in the car still,” Dietrich said. “You may have it all, if you and your men guard it until I return in several hours.”

The heads of the troop went up eagerly. Food? 

“We will do that, sir,” the Feldwebel said in relief. 

“Come, Felix,” Dietrich ordered. “We are walking.”

His aide fell in behind him, his face scowling. Behind him the troops grinned and gathered around the car. 

Another cloud of dust heralded a staff car whose driver tapped the brakes to stop beyond him. 

“Dietrich?” Rommel’s voice said incredulously. 

“Herr Feldmarschall!” Dietrich said coming to attention. Behind him Felix gasped and straightened, wincing as he landed on a blister. The troops instantly stood at attention.

“What are you doing here?” Rommel asked laughing as he stepped out of the car. 

“My car has broken down and I need a mechanic,” Dietrich explained. “I was planning on – “

“Get inside. I am going your way, and I will take you. You, Leutnant…” Rommel looked at Dietrich’s aide.

“Felix,” Dietrich said.

“Felix, find a mechanic and drive the car to Headquarters,” Rommel ordered, swinging open the door so Dietrich could step in. 

“Thank you, sir,” Dietrich said settling gratefully on the cushions. He wasn’t sure of how Felix was going to find the mechanic except to walk into town. The young man would have to work it out for himself. 

“Drive on!” Rommel ordered. “We are heading for the front lines.”

Dietrich saw the two exhausted soldiers head down to the water’s edge while the others clustered around the car looking for the food. Rommel’s driver drove off before Dietrich could trace the odd sense that he knew both the men. 

“What do you think of the fighting?” Rommel asked abruptly. “You have fought the Americans before.”

“They have discipline but it doesn’t show,” Dietrich answered. “They are pushing us back.”

“And my old friend, Montgomery, on the other side,” the general mused. “Persistent man. I would like to meet him someday.”

“Maybe when the war is over, sir,” Dietrich said. 

Rommel gave a flicker of a smile. “If we live through it.”

They were all thrown in a heap to one side as the driver abruptly changed course and took them under some poplar trees. 

“Bombers, Herr General,” he called back.

The four men glared at the bombers in neat lines that were filling the sky. The huge wingspans dominated the view and the end of the line was far distant. 

“Ah, here comes the Luftwaffe!” Dietrich commented professionally, shielding his eyes from the sun.

A pitiful number of Messerschmitts were climbing into the sky to intercept the bombers. The fighters swooped down and soon the sky was full of smoke trails. The crash of anti-aircraft guns nearby made them jump. 

“I hope we are not hit with the remains of our own shells,” Rommel said drily. “The fighters are attacking anything that moves on the roads. Dietrich, you are returning to your unit?”

“Ja. As soon as my car is fixed.”

”Nein,” Rommel contradicted him. “Requisition a car or a truck and return at once. I am heading over to the II SS Panzer Corps headquarters and will be returning to La Roche-Guyon tonight. I expect a battle report when I arrive, Dietrich.”

Dietrich stiffened and saluted. “Ja, sir!”

They pulled into the open square in the heart of Gallion-sur-Seine. The tired troops ignored the general’s car as they slumped on the cobblestones or drank thirstily from the fountain. The civilians were notably missing.

“They think we are finished,” Rommel remarked looking out through the windows. “We would have had a chance if we’d thrown the Amis back at the beaches.”

Dietrich remembered the discussion back at the castle. “We still have loyal men, sir,” he said encouragingly. “They will follow us no matter what.”

Rommel smiled grimly. “That is reassuring. Viel gluck, Major.”

Dietrich watched the car roll away, the troops parting, and a few saluting as they recognized the man in the back. He had never seen Rommel in a pensive mood like this. Usually the general was full of energy. The reports from the front must be depressing.

All the more reason for me to get to work. He looked around for a vehicle to requisition. 

 

***

 

Jack Moffitt led the way through the undergrowth. The sign that Pére Mathieu wanted to see them was hanging on a clothesline beside the graveyard. The red blanket must have been put out the night before from the waterstains. He and Monique had spent the night on the mountainside, soaked to the skin and hating each other as they waited it out. It had taken all morning to come up on the church since there were troops all around it, including several officers who had gone inside, then come out escorted by Pére Mathieu. In the last four hours, things had quieted down. It looked safe to proceed. 

She slid up beside him, nodded understanding, then went forward from gravestone to gravestone. They had to be particularly quiet since from the folds in the fabric, Mathieu was saying he had to speak with them urgently but that he had company. 

Monique chirped a pattern that resembled an indignant sparrow, but there wasn’t any response from the house. Finally, Mathieu stepped out, then closed the door, looking both ways. 

There seemed to be no Germans around. Mathieu walked from the crypt to the back door of the church and waited. 

Monique and Moffitt crept as close to the ground as they could until they had the shelter of the stone walls of the house.

“Come inside,” Mathieu whispered. 

“What is it, Pére?” Monique asked, relaxing slightly. They went inside. 

“I have some news. The German commander up at the farmhouse – “

“Lehr.”

“Lehr, yes, he is leaving in the next several days and taking his men. He came to tell me that he will lend me some workers for digging graves if I would like.”

It took Monique a second to realized why. “More graves? They’re killing more of the prisoners?”

The Pére nodded. “I think so. Today, tomorrow, I don’t know. But he made the offer. I offered to go up and give the final rites but he won’t let me inside.”

“You’d have been one of the victims if you went in,” Moffitt said. “This man Lehr doesn’t leave behind evidence that can be used against him.”

“You are right,” the priest replied “But I might have saved some of those who will die tomorrow.”

“We have to do something,” Monique hissed glaring at Moffitt. “We should have done something before!”

“We had our orders,” Moffitt said in warning. “Knocking out the German communications was important to the invasion.”

“And your men cannot break through to here and save those prisoners,” she said scornfully. “Where are the Americans?”

“I’m British,” he reminded her. “And men are dying out on our battlefields as well. There are only the two of us here. We can’t invade the farmhouse!”

Pére Mathieu cleared his throat self-consciously. “There is one more problem. I have a man here who says he needs to speak with the Resistance. He says he was with young Yves, and that the boy is now dead.”

“Yves? But he was sent away to be safe!” Monique protested. “The others in the family are gone except for that mouse, Helene, and her grandfather.”

“He could not be kept from the fighting,” Mathieu replied, spreading his hands, then laying them flat on the table. “And now he is dead.”

“Who is this stranger?” Moffitt asked sitting down on a three-legged stool.

“He will not give me a name. I believe he wishes to kill me the next time I go into the crypt, which is where I have locked him in.”

“I might try that myself if I were a prisoner,” Moffitt commented. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know except that he wishes to reach the Resistance.”

“And so he has,” Monique said, picking up her gun. “Where is he, Pére?”

“In the crypt. If you don’t recognize him, then he has to die,” Mathieu said flatly. “He knows too much about me now.”

Monique nodded. “Oui. If he knows you know the Resistance here, then he knows too much.” 

“Has he made any moves to get in touch with the Germans?” Moffitt asked. 

“Non, but he has no information to give them about me. I have kept him locked in the crypt,” Mathieu answered. 

“Let us go down with you, Pére,” she said coldly. “If he is a spy, then we can bury him with the good knight downstairs.”

“I’m not sure of that,” Moffitt muttered. “But it’s a good idea.”

Mathieu nodded. “He has a knife but I saw no gun.”

Moffitt pulled up the scarf he had around his neck, so only his eyes showed, and replaced his cap on his black hair. Holding the gun ready he stepped out only to find Monique, also having pulled up her shawl so it covered most of her face, cut him off. Shaking his head, he followed her and the priest to the door. Monique took up position on one side so that when it opened, she might be able to kill the stranger if he attacked. 

The priest opened the door, and the tall, dark-haired man with a bristling chin and dusty clothes standing at the window turned, knife held ready. 

Monique moved in, and aiming at the stranger. “Bonjour.”

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” the stranger replied, looking over both Monique’s and the Pére’s heads. His tone was full of vast relief. “Well, Jack, it’s been months. How are you?”

“Sir?” Moffitt replied incredulously, letting his gun sink down. “I didn’t know you were in the area!”

“This is a new part of France for me,” Alexander replied. “Do you have a radio!”

“Who is this man?” Monique asked suspiciously. 

Moffitt hesitated for just a second, wondering if he should identify the officer. “Monique, this is…”

“Colonel Peter Alexander, SOE,” he said briskly. 

Pére Mathieu laughed softly. “Come upstairs.”

“What about your radio?” Alexander asked softly as he followed, Moffitt at his side, and Monique hard on their heels. 

“We have a problem there, sir. Our radio was destroyed. There should be a new one coming to us but it hasn’t arrived yet.” 

“Damn!” They all went cautiously upstairs to the kitchen. “I need that radio. Where is it?”

“Hitchcock is supposed to meet us with it, sir,” Moffitt said crisply, sitting down at the table. “It is a six hour hike from here to the rendezvous.”

“If we can,” Monique cut in, determined not to be ignored. “There are many German troops out there.”

“You have to get it back here,” Alexander said flatly to Moffitt. 

“You need it that desperately, sir?” Moffitt replied. “I’ll get it for you, sir.”

“We will,” Monique added. 

“I’ll come with you—“ Alexander said then stopped as Moffitt made a cutting slash with his hand. 

“No, sir, if this is as important as you make it sound, then taking a chance of having you captured is worse than not bringing the radio to you,” Moffitt crisply stated. “Correct?”

Alexander hesitated his face full of indecision. Moffitt was startled by that –Alexander seldom showed uncertainty. “Yes…yes, you are correct.”

“Then stay here or somewhere safe until we return by nightfall,” Moffitt concluded. “Pére Mathieu, where can he stay?”

“Bunk down with the dead, again?” Alexander muttered. “Not a chance, Pére.”

“I know what to do with him,” Pére Mathieu said, putting washed tomatoes and salad in front of them. “I can use your help today, mon colonel.” 

“For God’s sake, don’t call me that!” Alexander said irritated. “My name is Peter.”

Pére Mathieu smiled. “Then today you must be Frere Peter from Paris here to help me with the church. The Germans will not ask questions.”

“We’d better get started,” Moffitt said in a muffled tone around the mouthful of lettuce and tomato. 

“Finish that before you choke,” Alexander replied watching him. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. To see you both,” he repeated looking politely at Monique. 

She nodded her head regally but kept watching him like a hawk. “Introduce me,” she ordered.

“Monique…”

“I am Monique, Colonel,” she said cutting Moffitt off. “I have been fighting the Boche since North Africa.”

“I see,” Alexander replied, eyeing her. “I admire your survival talents, Mademoiselle. You have been doing good work here.”

“Thank you, sir,” Moffitt said with a small laugh. “But I can’t wait to see our troops!”

Airplanes roared overhead, firing their guns, and they all flinched. “What do they see?” Alexander wondered.

“Troop transports and tired soldiers,” Monique answered. “I wish they could blow up the Gestapo farmhouse outside of town!”

“Is that where your men are?” Alexander asked in a softer tone.

“How do you know we’re missing men, sir?” Moffitt questioned.

“There are only two of you. You should have more,” Alexander said watching Monique. “Where are they?”

She hunched her shoulder. “At the farmhouse, Colonel. My comrades were caught but we,” she waved at Moffitt slightly disdainfully, “escaped. Without the radio!”

“ `Comrades’? Quite,” Alexander said faintly. Moffitt knew that the officer had picked up the Communist connection. He’d be even more wary of Monique until he knew whether she was or not. 

“You must leave if you are going to leave, Monique,” the Pére said suddenly, cocking his head. They heard the sound of engines. The car sounded like it was coming up fast. 

“They must be heading for here,” Moffitt said. “Monique…”

She stood, licking the last of the tomato’s juice off her lips. “Let’s go.”

Alexander stood and shook hands with Moffitt. “Don’t let me down, Moffitt.”

“No, sir.”

The room seemed emptier when they were gone. Pére Mathieu quickly washed the bowls and put them away. “Come with me. I have an old cassock that might fit you.”

“What are we going to do, Pére?”

“We are going fishing, mon fils. Then we will dig graves for our catch.”

 

***

 

Sam Troy’s pain was beyond what he remembered from before. The Gestapo usually beat their prisoners, but they’d gone beyond it this time, and Troy really wanted to die. 

He heard the sound of boots and urgent calls, and then the boots again outside his door. He looked up blearily as the door clanged open. 

The soldiers dragged him out and down the hall outside of the building. He was dragged inside to a mill and up to the turning waterwheel. Looking down he saw what looked like a body in the water, but the white foam from the wheel covered it. 

One soldier let go of his arm and he sagged against the other one who let him fall onto his knees. His bruised legs were too weak to hold him upright and his beaten feet were raw agony. At least they’d given him some pants so he wouldn’t die in his underwear.

He realized with a real chill, that the Gestapo were cleaning up their house. No matter what he might say or do – it was too late for him. 

He heard someone else being dragged up, and saw it was Gabrielle. Anger cleared his head more than anything else could; she had been tortured as he had but even worse. He doubted she could see out of her bruised eyes, and the flowered dress she wore was two sizes too big, flapping around a build that was even thinner than she was before. She was dragged like a puppet without strings. 

Lehr waved his hand, and the soldiers tied Troy and Gabrielle back to back. The ropes were tight.

With increased horror Troy realized that he was going to be thrown in the water. Then it would be a choice – either his head or Gabrielle’s could be out of the water, but not both.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather tell us the truth?” Lehr asked lazily.

Troy glared at him. He could hear Gabrielle sigh behind him. She was still alive then. 

Lehr gestured and the soldiers dragged them to the edge. They pushed the prisoners over into the churning water.

 

***

 

The sun was setting across the bucolic countryside. Slanting rays of sunshine shone through green leaves, and flies buzzed lazily among the cattails along the river’s edge. 

Alexander, stripped to the waist, stood in the deep water, his hands holding a long pike with a hook on the end. His knife was hidden in his pocket. 

Pére Mathieu had told him that this was where some of the bodies washed ashore. The priest had gone to get the cart so they could load the bodies to take them back to the church for burial. 

Upstream he could hear screams and gunfire, and he wished that he had some kind of bazooka or a bomb to blow up the farmhouse and mill. There was the sharp crack of a bullet, maybe two, and the louder splashes of the bodies. No wonder he’d tripped over so many fresh graves coming across the graveyard. 

Alexander wanted to meet the German officer capable of this kind of barbarity. He would try him, convict him, and hang him like Lehr had poor Yves. Lehr was doing what he had threatened, and was disposing of his captives. They were prisoners of war, or résistants, or just people swept up in the war, inconvenient people by Lehr’s standards. 

All they were short of was coffins but the Pére had been promised some that very afternoon. 

Alexander was glad that Moffitt and Monique were long gone before this grisly task started. He didn’t want to think what the woman would do if her men came floating down the river. Unstable and angry and a Communist to boot. `Comrade’ indeed! He’d known too many of her type from visiting Russia, and he didn’t trust her loyalty to France – only to Communism. 

It was a beautiful day for fishing. The first two bodies, tied in an obscene embrace, and floating on a stream of red-stained water were an abomination on the face of Mother Nature.

He reached for them with the hook and dragged them in. 

Two men, both with looks of horror on their bearded faces. Blood was flowing from one’s mouth where he’d bitten his lips. They were both dead from a bullet wound that had gone through both bodies. 

Alexander’s spirit sank but he dragged the bodies to the bank. There would be more, and he didn’t want to miss any. 

More gun shots, and louder. 

Another pair of bodies came into sight. Two young women tied face to face. They were young enough to be his children. His lips curled in a snarl as he fished them out and laid them on the bank.

He saw the priest leading a cart down the road beside the river. A trio of German soldiers stepped out of the woods and accosted the Pére. Alexander sensed trouble. Was he going to be betrayed? Or would they steal the horse and cart and kill the Pére or himself? He put his trust in fate, and turned back. 

A couple came into view, rolling over. A woman and a man?

His heart sank. He would know Troy’s hair anywhere. Splashing out, he intercepted the bodies and pulled them into the cattails. The water around them swirled red. 

 

***

Sam Troy felt someone pull his face out of the water and he couldn’t resist taking a drag of air. He’d been trying to keep Gabrielle’s face out of the river, and free himself, but the burning pain on his upper arm, and assorted other pains distorted his thinking. The woman was a dead weight on his back. Was she dead? She would be if he didn’t go under again.

“Sam! SAM!” a familiar voice hissed in his ear. “Troy!”

Troy opened his eyes a slit. Red water ran into them. Who was it? 

“Sam!” There was a slash of pain in his arm, then the blessed relief of the loss of Gabrielle’s weight. Gabrielle! He threw out a suddenly free arm, and felt more pain as his hand hit something.

“Damn!” said the familiar voice, and a hand grabbed his face forcing him to stop. “Troy, stay still!”

Alexander? This was insane. “Colonel…. “ 

“Yes, Troy. Quiet!”

Troy opened his left eye and saw Alexander. Turning his head, he saw the glint of a sharp knife, a dazzling light that hurt his eyes when the summer light glinted off it. That was probably how Alexander had cut the ropes. But what happened to Gabrielle?

“Let’s get you out of here,” Alexander whispered

“Gabrielle!” Troy called.

Alexander dragged him further into the cattails. “Quiet!”

“Gabrielle!!”

Alexander forced his head into the water, then let it up. Troy gasped for air. “Quiet! Soldiers!” 

Troy fuzzily heard the sound of boots and laughter. The sound of gun shots awakened a flash of fear, and he sank further down in the water. 

“They’ll be more bodies shortly,” Alexander murmured. “I’ll get you ashore in a few minutes. Trust me.”

Troy wondered what the hell was really going on but he closed his eyes and put his faith in Alexander. 

 

***

 

Hitchcock and Tully walked along the edge of the river, still dressed in their German uniforms. It had been a frustrating time for both men since every time they’d tried to escape to the rendezvous spot, they’d been swept up with other troops. It was dangerous beyond all imagining wearing German uniforms, but donning civilian garb could mean that they’d be shot out of hand as well. Packed in Hitchcock’s rucksack was the new radio, hidden underneath used socks and dirty underwear. 

Last night’s storm had broken just as they reached a barn, and they waited until it passed before heading up the river to where Hitchcock knew they could cross.

What they hadn’t expected to run into was Hans Dietrich and Rommel.

Rommel looked exactly like his pictures, and Dietrich looked older, more tired and less bronze from the sun, but he still had the ramrod stance they remembered so well. 

Both knew that if they were caught by Dietrich, they wouldn’t live five minutes in this war zone. Angry troops would probably shoot them even without orders. That was why they slid down to the river’s edge to get some water and to escape if possible. 

“Damn!” Tully said softly in awe. “Can you believe it? Rommel!”

Hitchcock shook his head, glancing back. “Never thought I’d see him again!”

“Again?”

“Dietrich.”

“Rommel!” Tully replied. “Wish he was on our side!” They both laughed. 

They splashed deeper into the water, enjoying the coolness. 

“See anyone back there?” Hitchcock asked knowing Tully’s sharp eyes would spot things before his.

Tully looked back. “Nope. They’re all eating lunch.”

“We can probably wade across,” Hitchcock said. “Get to the rendezvous spot in about a half-day if we’re lucky.”

“Right.” They waded out until it was up to their waists, holding their rucksacks above their heads to keep them dry.

The river had a stronger current than they thought it would. Hitchcock floundered and slipped, nearly dropping the rucksack with the radio, and Tully grabbed it, dropping his in the water. 

“Damn!” Tully fished around until he found his bag.

“Don’t worry. German rations won’t deteriorate with water,” Hitchcock said consolingly.

“Yeah but – watch out for that tree limb,” Tully said, fending off some debris that had floated down the river. “Must have been the storm raising the water levels!”

“What’s that?” Hitchcock asked looking among the leaves. 

Tully had seen it at the same moment. “Christ!”

They dragged the debris with them to the other side, clambering up the bank, and dumped their rucksacks. 

“It’s a woman,” Tully said angrily. 

Tangled in the leafy branches was a body. Dragging the woman out of water, they gently turned her over, and with equal horror, saw they knew her. 

Gabrielle Marchand. The woman that Moffitt had been in love with after Dunkirk, the woman who had nearly betrayed them to the Germans in North Africa. “What was she doing here, Tully? Was she with the Resistance? She has to have been. Look what they did to her!”

“Christ,” Tully breathed. From her swollen face and blackened eyes, and the burn marks on her bruised breasts. She had been tortured before she died. There was a bullet wound in her chest that exited her back. That was probably what had killed her. “Yeah, she was part of some group. But why is she here?”

“What about Moffitt?” Hitchcock asked, his brow knit. “How do we tell him?”

“Listen!”

They heard the two soldiers coming long before they saw them, and debated, with looks, whether they should hide, but Tully had just shrugged and followed Hitchcock’s lead. 

The men came around the corner and hailed Hitchcock. The soldiers saw them kneeling beside a body, and headed towards them, one raising his rifle.

Pettigrew didn’t falter as he shot them both. 

“That sound’s gonna carry. Put them into the water,” Hitchcock said callously as he stood. “Maybe fishing them out will give us some time. If the Germans find out we’ve killed their men, they might take it out on any civilians around here.”

“What about her?” Tully asked smoothing down Gabrielle’s over-large dress over her battered body. 

Hitchcock hesitated. “What do you think?”

“Put her under the leaves, and mark the spot. We’ll come back when we’ve met up with Moffitt, and get her buried somehow.” Hitchcock looked down with honest regret. “I don’t want to tell Moffitt about this. He was in love with her, Tully!”

“Let’s not tell him all the details,” Tully agreed. “Come on before the Krauts start looking for us.”

 

***

 

Alexander had been in two wars now, but laying out the dead was never something he enjoyed. He’d killed men in cold blood for the good of his country, but they’d always been fighting him, not had their hands tied behind their backs. 

On a piece of paper, he grimly noted the details of the dead men and women, and helped Mathieu lay them in the rude cardboard coffins that were all that could be provided. Alexander hoped that they could bury them before the paper fell apart. 

The door of the church opened, and he swung around as a woman entered.

“Wait, Frere Peter,” Mathieu said warningly. “She is with us.”

Alexander saw it was Yves’ sister…no, aunt, the woman who had directed him to the church. 

“Helene, welcome,” the priest greeted her coming down the stairs. “We need your help laying them out.”

“I thought you would, Pére,” she said simply, sliding off her brown coat and hanging it over the back of one of the chairs. She unfastened her hat and laid it on top. “I see you have some help?”

“Frere Peter, who I believe you know,” Mathieu replied, glancing from one to the other. “He is here from Paris.”

“Bon. How many are here?” she asked, her gaze going beyond the man behind Alexander. 

“Twelve.”

“Are they from the village?”

Mathieu hesitated. “Some of them.”

She closed her eyes momentarily and folded her hands, praying, then looked up. “I am ready to help.”

“Frere Peter, go check on the garden,” Mathieu ordered looking at him. “Give it some water.”

That meant visit Troy down in the crypt. Alexander wasn’t quite sure why the priest was sending him away but it was time to check on Troy. “Oui, Pére,” he said submissively and walked away, feeling the unaccustomed cassock drag at this feet. Luckily he was only a few inches shorter than Mathieu so it didn’t drag, but it was ample for the slender Englishman. 

 

***

 

Lying in the shadow of the knight, Troy looked like one of the bodies upstairs except that he was breathing. The room was heating up as the sun hit mid-afternoon, and insects flew through the broken glass. 

Alexander knelt beside Troy, checking for a pulse in his throat. The beat was strong. Good. He would recover then. He pulled down the blanket to Troy’s waist and surveyed the damage. 

The marks of torture stood out starkly. Mostly bruising in the abdomen, scabs on his chest from burns and his wrists and ankles were torn. His feet were purple and black with bruises, and, in one place, raw. Alexander doubted that Troy was going to be doing long walks anytime soon. There had been marks on his genitals as well, but those were from electric shocks. Alexander knew that at least Troy hadn’t been raped. He’d already checked. He’d seen enough of that sort of thing during his public school years in England to know what to look for. 

Troy stirred, breaking Alexander out of memories he’d locked away forever, and Alexander sat down, holding the glass of water ready. “Troy?”

He opened his eyes a slit. “Colo…nel?”

“Drink this,” Alexander ordered, sliding his hand under Troy’s head and helping him up slightly. “It’ll help.”

The man swallowed obediently then took some more. “Colonel?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“How?”

“How? I found you in the river.”

Troy’s eyes blinked open. “Rommel!”

“Shh! Quiet! Don’t say anything about it,” Alexander hissed. 

“But…”

“Did you tell them anything, Sam?”

“What? Rommel…no,” Troy replied weakly. “They don’t know about it.”

Alexander breathed a sigh of relief. “Good! I’m sorry about this, Troy.”

Troy tried to shrug, then winced instead. “At least they didn’t get you, sir.”

“I wish I’d been able to stop them from getting you both!”

“The mission…”

“Is probably blown,” Alexander said grimly. “The Germans destroyed our radio, and now Moffitt’s gone to get a replacement—“

“Moffitt?” Troy asked weakly.

“Yes, that’s a long story. I’ve met up with him. How do you feel?”

Troy opened one eye for a second. “Hungry.”

“I will see if the Pére has anything for a weak man,” Alexander said in relief. “Don’t try and move, Troy. The Jerries can see into this crypt and might spot you.”

“My feet…” Troy said weakly trying to stretch his leg. “They hurt.”

“Yes, they gave you quite a beating on them,” Alexander replied. “A couple of slashes as well. I washed them as well as I could. Used some of the church wine as well to clean them out. I suspect it was a cheap bottle.”

Troy chuckled. “Church?”

“I’ll explain once I’ve got you some breakfast,” Alexander said. “Or maybe dinner. Sunset’s coming on.”

“I’ll be here.” Troy closed his eyes and licked his lips drinking in the water left behind.

Alexander laughed and stood. “Get some rest.”

 

***

 

Moffitt was cursing as fluently as he could in a number of languages. They were trapped again by German troops, and had been for several hours lying on sharp rocks on the hillside above the rendezvous. The troops below didn’t look like they’d be moving anytime soon. 

If they managed to get rid of their unwanted guests, they would still not be able to get back to the church before daybreak or even mid-morning. Everything was going wrong. 

“We need to move,” Monique said in his ear. 

“Why don’t you strip off your shirt and distract them?” he whispered back in exasperation. 

She glared at him. “Why don’t you shoot them?”

Two new soldiers came out of the darkness, one answering in fluent German. 

Moffitt caught his breath. He knew that voice and he knew the way the man spoke the language. He’d taught him how to speak German. It was Hitchcock. Who was his friend?

"Hitchcock," he muttered to Monique, who nodded. 

Hitchcock settled down by the minuscule fire with the other troops, offering to augment their rations. The original five troops and one officer relaxed. 

Moffitt wasn’t sure of what was going on, but this might be the moment for the ambush since the troops’ attention was on Hitchcock. He moved, and his hand slipped on the stone around him. 

One man’s head went up sharply and he looked up. “Was?”

Moffitt shoved the bigger rocks he’d been hiding behind, Monique lending her strength. The rocks tumbled down scattering the troops. 

Hitchcock and his friend pulled their pistols and shot three of the men. The officer aimed at Hitchcock but one shot from Monique took him out. The other two Germans fled into the darkness before anyone could aim at them, leaving their packs and weapons behind. 

In the silence, Hitchcock looked up the hill warily. Moffitt cupped his hands around his lips and hooted. 

“Moffitt?” 

“Hitch!” Moffitt skidded down the steep hillside. “Thank God.”

“Hey, Sarge!” The stranger said, doffing his hat. “Miss me?”

“Tully!” Moffitt said in great relief. “Where’d you come from?”

Tully shrugged. “Kentucky.” 

Moffitt grimaced, then laughed. “Have you got the radio?”

“Yeah. Nearly doused it in the river, but it’s here,” Hitchcock said, tapping a toe on his rucksack. “Hi, Monique.”

“We need to move out,” she commanded acknowledging him with a cool nod, and giving Tully a skeptical look. “The Germans will be back with reinforcements, and they will scour this area for us since we killed the troops.”

“You’re right,” Moffitt agreed, looking around at the dead men. “But grab their weapons and ammunition first.”

“Grab their food,” Tully grunted, pulling several potatoes out of the embers of the fire. 

“For once, we get to eat their dinner!” Hitchcock said with great satisfaction.

“Right. Move out. We’ve got to get back to the colonel – “

“Colonel? Colonel Alexander?” Hitchcock and Tully spoke at almost the same moment. 

“Oh, yes,” Moffitt asked.”Very put out that we didn’t have a working radio.”

“Come on, idiots!” Monique said furiously. 

“Not `comrades'?” Tully asked quizzically.

She glared at him, and disappeared into the darkness. 

“Unfortunately, she has a point. Move on!” Moffitt ordered. “And keep it quiet!”

Hitchcock and Tully exchanged glances but followed. “When are you going to tell him about Gabrielle?” Tully muttered.

“Later.”

 

***

 

Troy stirred, then stopped and listened. Quiet around him. He heard the sound of a cricket nearby and the wind blowing through the grass. Nothing human. Alexander must be upstairs.

He’d come back with boiled eggs, more water, and a blanket, and explained everything to Troy as he fed him. In return, Troy told him about Gabrielle, and watched the officer’s face close into the cold lines that masked deep anger. Lehr was now on Alexander’s condemned list if he hadn’t been before. The man wouldn’t rest until justice was done. 

Then Troy had fallen asleep again. 

It had to be the middle of the night from the silvery light of the moon pouring into the crypt and the chill in the air. 

He cautiously moved his head to either side testing the stiff muscles. Strangely enough he didn’t feel much pain. Bracing himself, he felt the bruising but not the agony he expected. 

Gritting his teeth, he slowly sat up, creaking in every joint. It wasn’t as bad as he thought. 

His arm was bandaged from his elbow to his wrist. Blood showed in the cloth. He must have been cut. 

Vaguely he remembered Alexander saying he had been dousing him in wine. That explained why the smell. Actually it smelled more like brandy. _I smell like a year-old Christmas fruitcake,_ Troy thought. 

He bent his knees, drawing his feet under him and tried to stand.

Agony forced him down with a gasp and then a hiss. It was his feet. His heels and toes were on fire. 

He tried again to lift himself up.

It was slightly less painful but still too much for him to take. He sat back on the blanket and blinked away the tears. Several escaped, running down his cheeks.

He heard a creak, the door opened and he saw Alexander enter carrying a basket. Thankful that he was sitting in the shade of the tomb, Troy wiped away the moisture. 

Alexander came over. “Feeling better?”

“Yes. But my feet…”

“Need a doctor. The rest of your body is improving which is a testament to your good health, but we need to get you into town to see the doctor,” Alexander said succinctly. He sat down cross-legged. “It’s curfew out there. We can’t move at night.”

“What did you do all day?” Troy asked.

He couldn’t see the colonel’s expression but his voice was calm and remote. “I buried the men and women who came down the river. Some of them drowned, some of them were shot. Some young girls that could have been my daughter. Damn that German bastard!”

“Lehr?”

“Lehr.”

“What about Rommel, sir?” Their initial mission was never too far from Troy’s mind.

“Moffitt isn’t back yet,” Alexander replied. “The Pére has a wireless and we listened to the BBC tonight but there was nothing for us.”

“Wasn’t there a deadline?”

“Yes,” Alexander said chillingly. “It’s past.”

Troy sighed, leaning back. “What do we do?”

“We wait. Come daybreak I’ll go to the town and find the Pére’s doctor. Maybe when I come back, Moffitt will be here with the radio.”

“What about the war, sir?”

Alexander’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight for a second. “From what the propagandists on the BBC says we’re beating them on all fronts, Troy. Our troops have broken through at Caen and should be here in a couple of days.”

“What then?”

“What? Oh, for you? Hospital—“

“I don’t want to be out of the war,” Troy stated. 

Alexander was quiet for a minute. “I see. Your wounds—“

“I’ll heal.”

“I’m sure you will. The only part of you that worries me, Troy, are your feet!”

“Feet heal, Colonel.”

“I’m sure they do, but they take time!”

“I nearly stood before you came in,” Troy said defiantly. 

“That was probably not a good idea,” Alexander replied cuttingly. He stared at the dark shadow that was Troy. “Do you have any idea of how much trouble you might have with your injuries, Sam?”

Troy knew when Alexander used a first name he was serious. It was uncommon for the officer to do that, even if they had worked together for years. “Yes, sir.”

Alexander rocked back and forth for a second. “Right. You would. Troy, I will not let them invalid you out of the war unless you are so badly wounded that you can’t fight.”

“Like Tully was when they sent him back a couple of years,” Troy said. 

“Exactly. Like Tully was before Moffitt brought him back into the war.” 

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see what the doctor has to say first.”

Troy fingered the stone carving next to him. “What does this say?”

“Hm? Sir Guy D’Amberouise, 1240 to 1282. Actually, the Pére says he was an knight of no particular redeeming qualities,” Alexander said waving towards the statue. “What is on the tomb was put there to improve his reputation.”

Troy ran his hand over the inscription. “It’s almost as if someone hacked at it.”

Alexander chuckled. “I believe his son. A second son – the first’s body was hung at the crossroads because he committed suicide. The rumor was that his wife drove him to it.”

“Wives will do that,” Troy said with a laugh. “Not that I’d know that first-hand.”

“I would know. My wife would drive anyone to madness,” Alexander grimly replied.

“You’re married?” Alexander never mentioned a wife in the year they’d worked together.

“Former wife. I don’t know where she is.”

“You don’t care?”

Alexander shook his head. “No. We divorced several years after the war, the first war. I do have to thank her for getting me my job though.”

“She helped?”

“She drove me out of England to the continent to get away from her.” Alexander’s tone was dry and acid. “I went to Germany, then Russia, over the next several years. Perfected my language skills, though I’m not that proficient in Russian. I spent years in Germany watching that little man, Hitler, take control."

“And you did nothing?”

“What did you expect me to do?” Alexander asked. 

“That was a stupid question.”

“You’re not at your best right now, Troy. You should get some more sleep.”

“Colonel, Gabrielle was tied to me.”

A pause, then Alexander said softly. “I know.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“A chest wound. I don’t know why the bullet didn’t hit you.”

“She jerked me around at the last moment before we went in the water. She took that bullet for me.”

“Then she’ll be remembered for her death as well as her life,” Alexander said calmly, though his hands were clenched. Troy knew he liked Gabrielle. They had trusted each other the way people whose lives were on the line every day did. “I’m sure her body will wash up downstream.”

“I didn’t know she was dead. I kept trying to keep her head above water.”

“I know. I almost had to hit you to keep you from doing that.”

“But she was dead—“

“She was dead before she hit the water, Sam, I’m sure of it. No one could live with that kind of a wound.”

Troy almost believed him. Over the last few years, he and Alexander had worked closely and he knew how cold-bloodedly the colonel could act if necessary. But he would also choose to save the one who could be saved – and that had been Troy. There was a nagging doubt in the back of Troy’s mind that didn’t let go. Had Gabrielle been alive when Alexander cut them apart?

“Get some rest, Sam,” Alexander ordered lying down on another blanket. “Tomorrow I’ll see Pére Mathieu’s doctor.”

 

***

 

Hans Dietrich led his men up the road to Gallion, and loathing the fact that he was leaving his dead behind. He was tired and dusty from the long drive. Still it was an orderly retreat, and they carried the wounded rather than leaving them for the Allies. 

Those pesky Allied flyers were strafing his troops and Dietrich cursed the Luftwaffe who weren’t up to the job of keeping the skies safe. He’d only seen one air battle, and taken advantage of it to move his men out, but it hadn’t stopped other fighters from coming down like crows on a dead corpse. He’d lost his hat in one attack, and the hot sunlight was beating down on his unprotected head giving him a massive headache.

He drove into chaos in the small town of Gallion-sur-Seine, and, muttering imprecations, directed Felix to park the commandeered half-track underneath the chestnut trees lining one side of the square near a stone monument to the dead of the first war. The temperature dropped by several degrees in the shade. 

His troops straggled behind him, a fraction of their number that morning. He estimated the civilians gathering to look out the windows and milling around the square outnumbered his men by three to one. Uneasily, he remembered that, while one of the first things the Germans did when they took over France was disarm the French, the Maquis and the Allies had done their best to rearm them. The sooner he, and his troops, was out of here, the better. 

A staff car drove into the square from the other side, stopping by the fountain in the middle, and he saw a familiar face climb out of the front truck. It was Hauptmann Lehr of the Gestapo. Dietrich vaguely remembered that Lehr had said he was moving out of the area but why was he here in town now? 

A truck entered the square at a reckless pace forcing the civilians to scatter and stopped in front of Lehr. His second-in-command jumped out, saluted, then waved towards the truck. They both walked around the rear. 

Felix asked, “Shall I see what is going on, Herr Major?”

Dietrich nodded. “Yes. We’ll need the water for our troops, and I may need to requisition those trucks.”

Felix headed for Lehr’s trucks. Dietrich looked back at his men, who grinned and raised hands in greeting despite their exhaustion, and a rueful smile creased his dirt-smeared face. They still trusted him. He had to live up to it, especially with the bad news he’d just heard from Headquarters. 

He was trying to not believe the message. Rommel. What were they going to do now without Rommel? 

Mentally, he shoved the question to a corner of his mind, and eyed the growing crowds with unease. The French were coming out to see the show.

 

***

 

Moffitt was heartily tired of dodging enemy soldiers. There were German troops all over the area near Gallion-sur-Seine, combat-tired troops. Their little group had nearly been discovered several times by lost enemy soldiers. The German front lines were retreating further and further into France. These troops knew they were losing. 

This made them dangerous, Moffitt knew, because they had less to lose and were more likely to act irrationally. 

As the sun rose, he and the others headed into the town. With any luck they might be able to get through it, out the other side, and up to the church. There was no other way of getting there. 

Tully and Hitchcock followed behind a hundred feet, just two more exhausted soldiers with their packs, while Moffitt and Monique led the way. The girl garnered more than one look and ribald comment from the passing troops, but no one bothered them as they reached the town square, and found with some horror, that it was filled with armored cars and several tanks. 

The bread from the boulangerie was being distributed to the soldiers without protest from the baker, who looked like he’d been dragged from his bed to provide food for the troops who were eating like wolves. This might be their last meal and they were in no mood to be chary. 

Moffitt knew he was in the most dangerous place he could be. They had to get out of Gallion-sur-Seine. 

Hitchcock drifted up, bumping into him. “Dietrich,” he breathed, and nodded his head to the far end of the square, then went on to one of the lines for bread. 

_Dietrich? Hans Dietrich! God, what kind of luck have we got now?_ Moffitt took Monique by the elbow and tried steering her to one side, but she pulled free and disappeared into crowds. He muttered a curse and scanned the square, and finally spotted her under one of the chestnut trees too near Dietrich for him to dare reach her. 

He retreated towards a group of civilians standing at the mouth of one of the streets, leaving her and the others to make their way as best they could. 

_This was madness. Why did the war have to retreat here today? If any of them were identified, who knows what might happen?_

Looking around, he saw a familiar face in the group of prisoners that were being dragged out of the truck to face Lehr. His eyes widened in shock.

What the hell were Alexander and Troy doing here?

 

***

Alexander had been awakened by the sound of birds outside the window. Two doves were cooing among the tall grass. Insects buzzed around, and into the crypt, and he slapped at one mosquito.

The noise startled Troy who grunted, then snorted. One hand brushed away the fly, then he opened his eyes. 

Alexander rose feeling an ache in every bone and joint. “I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered under his breath. 

“For war?” Troy asked curiously. 

“For everything except a hot bath,” Alexander said rudely. “Let me see what’s going on.”

He headed upstairs towards the kitchen but stopped when he heard the sound of furious German being exchanged. He flattened against the wall, looking both ways, feeling desperation go through him. 

The door was open and he peeped inside, surprise catching him for a second time. 

Pére Mathieu was patiently cutting apples but across the table was a familiar face that Alexander had never expected to see again. Larson?

“Pére, if you know any way to reach the Allies – “

“How would I know?” Mathieu rumbled, reaching for another apple. “I have no connections with them.”

“Hauptmann Lehr says you do! They have been watching you. I have to reach the Allies!”

“Surrender.”

“It’s not that easy! I can’t get near the front lines. That damned Major Dietrich is holding the line, and I can’t get through!”

Alexander pushed open the door. “Larson?”

Larson looked around in fear, then astonishment. “You! You’re alive?”

“Breakfast? I am stewing apples,” the Pére asked, with a slight smile. “How is your friend?”

“`Friend’?” Larson said suspiciously, his gaze darting around. “How did you get here?”

“The long way,” Alexander replied, eyeing him with equal suspicion. “What do you want to say to the Allies?”

“Did you get through?” Larson demanded urgently. “What do they say?”

Alexander hesitated for a fraction of a second. “They are open to the idea,” he finally lied. God knows what he had just gotten the Allied High Command into but he wasn’t going to tell Larson that he hadn’t reached them.

“Even with the new news?”

“News?” Both Mathieu and Alexander looked askance. 

“About Rommel.”

“What about Rommel?” Alexander demanded, leaning over to grab his wrist. 

Larson shrugged him off. “He was attacked by one of the fighters yesterday and is probably dead now, or badly wounded. The word has not spread far, but soon— “

They were interrupted by the harsh grinding of an untuned engine. Looking out the window they saw a truck coming lumbering up the road. 

Mathieu straightened. “Mon Dieu, it is one of Hauptmann Lehr’s trucks!”

“Gestapo!” Alexander snarled “Damn all!”

“Get out of here,” Larson rasped standing and sending his chair back with a clatter. “If they find you here, I’m lost.”

“Down in the crypt,” Mathieu ordered. “Hide!”

Alexander took off down the hall, skittered through the church, all the time expecting to hear the sound of boots thunder behind him. 

Entering, he found that Troy had somehow used the bucket that the Pére had left for a toilet and was now wearing the dark cassock that Alexander had used as a blanket over him the night before. He was standing on his sore feet, his face creased in gritted determination, and leaning heavily on the knight. 

“Troy, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“What is it?” Troy asked through his clenched teeth.

“Gestapo sweep. Looks like they’ve twigged the Pére. Can you limp?”

“I’ll have to,” Troy mumbled. Underneath his tan, his face was white.

Alexander reached out to catch him as he took a step and gasped, and then the sunlight was cut off. 

Looking up in horror, they saw a German soldier peering through the window of the crypt, his rifle pointed towards them. 

 

***

 

Moffitt watched as Troy, Pére Mathieu and Alexander were lined up against the side of the fountain. He was close enough to see Lehr’s reaction to Troy’s appearance, and hear his surprised exclamation.

“You again!”

Troy’s eyes narrowed but he swayed in the hands of the troops, and Alexander braced him. Lehr stared at Alexander, then nodded. “And you. No chicken this time?”

“You ate it,” Alexander replied boldly. 

“After I ate your warning geese. I seem to specialize in eating your dinner. What is your name?”

Larson came out of the cab of the truck, looking shaken. The driver stayed at his side almost as a guard. 

“Herr Hauptmann,” Lehr said respectfully but with a trace of malice. “My officer tells me you were with the Pére when we captured him.” 

“Ja. I was…” Larson knew that anything he said was probably not going to be believed, “talking to him.”

“Why?” Lehr asked.

Larson straightened up. “That is none of your business, Herr Hauptmann! I am from Berlin!”

“I am sending my troops back there now, so I will be happy to escort you myself,” Lehr said with an edge to his voice. “Especially with what has happened to the Feldmarshall!”

“The Feldmarshall?” someone asked behind him. “Rommel?”

Troy glanced in worry at Alexander whose lips were compressed as he eyed the surrounding Germans with the arrogance that only an Englishman could have. “Rommel? What happened to Rommel?”

Lehr turned on his heel. “Finally you talk! You're an American!” He looked surprised, then pleased. “Obviously one of those agents dropped by the filthy British to disrupt us!” 

Troy raised his chin. “Yeah, I’m an American.”

Lehr stared suspiciously at Alexander who returned it coldly. “And what are you, eh?”

Moffitt felt his arm plucked, and he glanced around at the small woman next to him. He bent over to hear her whisper. “Monique says ‘be ready.’”

Monique? He felt a gun being pushed into his hand, and risked a glance. A revolver? He hastily stuffed it under his coat. What was she up to?

Overhead they heard the sound of airplanes. More fighters dueled overhead. 

Another officer came up. “What is happening here?”

Lehr stared at him. “Who are you?”

“I am Leutnant Felix of Major Dietrich’s staff,” Felix replied with equal loftiness. He waved across the square that was getting more and more crowded. “He wants to know what is going on. He needs trucks to move the wounded.”

“Not my—wait.” Lehr glanced at the trio, then back. “Tell Major Dietrich that I will have a truck free in a few minutes.” 

“Ja, sir.” Felix started back across the square, pushing through the crowd. 

Lehr became aware of the group around them, the mixture of civilians and troops. “What are these people doing here? Get them back!”

His troops began to push people back, away from the truck and the three prisoners. There was murmuring in the crowd as the townspeople recognized the Pére. It grew louder as Lehr ordered the guards to tie Alexander, Troy and the Pére side by side, and stand them up against the side of the fountain. 

Troy, being on one end, sagged immediately, and Alexander did his best to brace him. “Steady on, Troy.”

Lehr glanced at him. “British. Englander.” He slapped him across the face, then spat. 

Alexander shook his head to clear the pain. The spit ran down one cheek. “You’re losing, Hauptmann,” he said loudly in German. “The Allies are close by. Killing us will make it harder on you. Surrender and you might have a chance.”

Lehr laughed. “The Amis won’t be here fast enough for you. What name do you want on your tombstone?”

Alexander didn’t reply, just scanned the crowd. Whatever he saw made him say again, loudly, in German, “Surrender to us, and you might live out the war.”

The crowd stirred restlessly, the troops and civilians muttering among themselves. 

“You, you and you!” Lehr ordered three of the soldiers, not his own men by chance. “You have ammunition, you shoot them.”

“Nein,” said one emphatically. “We are Major Dietrich’s troops. You cannot order us to shoot prisoners.”

Troy gave a breath of a laugh and tried to straighten up. “Dietrich again.”

“I’m giving you an order,” Lehr said icily. “I am from the Gestapo—“

“We are Wehrmacht,” the man replied. “You are Gestapo. If you want us to shoot them then have Major Dietrich order us.”

Lehr glared at him, then around seeing agreement in the faces of the men. Only his troops avoided his eyes. “I will talk with Major Dietrich. Where is he?”

The man pointed to the trees at the other end. “Over there.”

Moffitt glanced over at the armored car parked under the trees. The officer was barely recognizable through the dirt on his uniform. Yes, that was Dietrich all right. 

Overhead he heard the engines and saw a fighter dive out of the sky swooping towards the town and jumped back.

“Sturzkampfbomber!” one of the soldiers screamed, and mass panic spread among the crowd. The plane’s wings waggled, then one broke off and fell. The fighter cartwheeled over the town and vanished behind the buildings. The ground shook as it crashed and billows of black smoke stained the sky.

The fractured wing hit the chestnut trees. Dietrich started to run, but the leafy branches came down on the car and the men, burying them all. The crowd fled over each other into buildings or among the other troops. 

Troy groaned and sagged back, dragging Alexander and the Pére down with him onto the edge of the fountain. His bottom lip was bloody from being bitten against the pain.

“Viva la Resistance!” came a woman’s scream. “Sales Boches! La France eternalle!” Firing started. 

The troops milled around for several precious seconds making themselves targets. 

A machine gun stitched the gas tank of a nearby truck, and it exploded, sending shrapnel through the air . It sent a plume of dirty smoke into the air. 

Moffitt punched one of the soldiers who had pulled his rifle off his shoulder, and then ducked to one side as the man was impaled on a Frenchman's pitchfork. 

The civilians fought with desperation. They knew that there would be no mercy in the Germans who might come in to impose discipline on Gallion-sur-Seine after the deaths that had already happened. The best they could do was free themselves of the enemy. 

Moffitt aimed at the few men who managed to pull their guns, often finding that he was the second or third man who fired. Monique must have armed half the town. 

After a few minutes, the riot calmed down, the German troops now prisoners of the triumphant civilians. Moffitt moved over to where Troy and the others were crumpled on the ancient cobblestones near the burning truck. 

“Troy?” He pulled out a knife from his boot, and cut the ropes that held him to Alexander, then the ropes between the colonel and Pére Mathieu. “Colonel?”

Alexander stirred, moved cautiously, and realized he was free. He pushed himself to his knees, then up, falling back on the lip of the fountain. “Moffitt. How is Troy?”

“I’m seeing, sir,” Moffitt replied, sliding a hand under Troy’s arm. Troy moved slightly, then raised his face and grinned. “He's still alive.”

“Just,” Troy said in a weak voice. He leaned back against the lip, a pang of agony going across his face for a second, before being hidden. “What is going on?”

“We are free,” the Pére rumbled. “But for how long?”

They looked at the milling crowd. It wouldn’t take much for the troops to rebel against the civilians, or more soldiers to come into the town from the front and switch the balance of power. 

“I’d better get Hitch and Tully,” Moffitt remarked. “Stay here.”

Troy looked around in bewilderment. “Hitch and Tully are here?”

“Apparently so,” Alexander said. “How are you doing, Troy?”

“Colonel?” the woman asked again. 

“Helene?” Alexander acknowledged courteously. “How are you?”

“Bon! You did not say you were `Yves’ Colonel’. He talked of you on one visit home.”

“We had no time to talk when we met,” he replied, his attention drawn again to the crowd. It was stirring restlessly, various people cat-calling the Germans. “I’d better go see what is going on.”

“What about our mission, sir?” Troy asked, catching his arm before he left. 

Alexander looked at him grimly. “It’s over, Troy. Rommel got shot up by fighters.”

He stared speechlessly at Alexander. “Is he dead?”

“No longer helpful to us,” Alexander replied ambiguously. “I think I’d better go help Moffitt.” He pulled his arm free, and walked towards the crowds, Helene following him. 

Pére Mathieu laid his hand on Troy’s shoulder. “Put your feet in the fountain.”

“What?”

“The water. It’s cool. It will help you.”

Troy stared at him, then at the water, then around at the crowd. “There’s nothing I can do, is there?”

“Not with your wounds. Put your feet in the fountain. It will help with the pain.”

 

***

 

Alexander saw Moffitt talking urgently to some men waving towards two soldiers who were edging their way to the front of the line. Whatever he was saying wasn’t working terribly well until Monique came up beside him, around her neck a red scarf and on her head a black beret. 

She looks like a poster girl for the résistants, he thought cynically. 

“Now where is he?” she demanded. “Hauptmann Lehr! Is he dead?”

“Non!” someone cried. “There he is!”

A trio of men, backed up by several riflemen, plunged into the troops and dragged Lehr out.

Alexander felt no pity for the Gestapo officer who was white with fear. It was different to face an angry mob than to be the executioner. 

She stalked up to him, and spat in his face as he had done to Alexander. “Cochon! You killed Theron and Paul, and many others. Don’t try to deny it!” she declared in French.

“I— I— did—``

“Pig!”

The crowd roared approval when she slapped him. She stepped back and threw up her arms. “What do we do with him, mon comrades?”

“Kill him!” came the cry. “Kill the collabos! Kill the Germans!”

She pointed at Lehr. “He killed many résistants and many of your friends! Him first!”

“Colonel, are you going to try and stop them?” Moffitt asked urgently in English as the officer joined them, Helene right behind him. 

"Why?’ Alexander answered Moffitt. 

“But he’s an officer!”

“He’s a murderous bastard who deserves what he gets,” Alexander said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Besides, I doubt there is anything I can do for him. I've got no one to vouch for me here.”

The men dragged Lehr towards the masses of fallen branches where Dietrich and his car were buried. Following along, Alexander saw several troops standing among the leaves, their hands up, except for one young red-haired officer, whose nose was bleeding red, kneeling beside a staff car half-buried in foliage. The young officer looked up but didn’t move as the civilians moved past him, dragging Lehr and his second-in-command. 

A rope was procured from somewhere and thrown over the lower branches by a young girl who had climbed up a neighboring chestnut tree with the rope. 

“We have only one rope,” Monique said in good humor from the front, “but I’m sure he’ll wait his turn.” She pointed to the young officer, who blanched but didn’t move. 

“Wait!” said Pére Mathieu who was pushing his way through the crowd.

“This is the end, Pére!” she screamed at him, her face going red. “He is going to be hanged!”

“Save me!” Lehr cried out, looking desperately around. “I am a prisoner-of-war! Englander!”

Curses flew and he was drowned out.

The priest stopped beside him. “Let me give him absolution,” he said to Monique. 

Her answer was forestalled when Lehr lashed out, catching his guards by surprise. 

One huge fist hit Lehr’s jaw and he slumped back, blinking in confusion. 

“Salaud! That is for all the men and women who I buried,” Pére Mathieu said angrily. “For the anonymous dead of the river.” He began to pray.

“Hang him!” someone screamed and the crowd surged forward.

Alexander turned away as the bloodlust rose. “Let’s see if we can get Tully and Hitch out now, Moffitt.” He walked over to the civilians watching the German troops. “Two of those men are mine,” he said flatly in French. “I want them out.”

“And who are you?” one man demanded angrily. Alexander’s order was distracting him from watching Lehr as he slowly strangled to death.

“He is an English officer,” said Helene coming out of the crowd. “He commanded Yves and the résistants.”

The man tipped his hat to her. “Young Yves...”

“Is dead. Like my brother and his wife, and the other résistants.” Helene raised her chin. “But I know who this man is. He is Yves’ Colonel. Let him have the two men.”

Suspiciously, he stared from her to Alexander, then back, then shrugged. “Oui. Which men?”

In relief, Alexander beckoned and Hitchcock and Tully came out of the crowd. The Frenchmen stared at them as they saluted Alexander, American style. “Glad to see you, sir,” they chorused.

“Glad to see you both,” Alexander replied in English. “Better get out of those uniforms.”

“Yes, sir!” they chorused, stripping down to their shirtsleeves. 

“I will get you some clothes,” Helene said. She turned to the men standing behind the guard. “Alphonse, Poulie, give them your coats. I will be back with new jackets for you later.”

Alexander caught her sleeve. “Thank you.”

She blushed, and shook her head. “For Yves.” She disappeared into the crowd. 

Looking back into the crowd, Alexander spotted Larson looking badly shaken. He stared at the spy for a second, then deliberately turned away, noting out of the corner of his eyes, Larson’s relief. Whatever happened now, Larson’s cover was not blown. 

“Uh, Colonel, it’s getting ugly out there,” Hitchcock said pointing towards the crowd that was now singing La Marseillaise. Lehr’s dead body dangled from the rope. Above him, the girl was conducting the singing, her face a portrait of triumph. 

“Yes, I think now they’ve had enough blood,” Alexander said decisively. He pushed his way back through the crowds. Moffitt followed him closely, Hitchcock and Tully right behind. “This is going to be bloody dangerous.”

The crowd stared at him as he climbed over the foliage and up onto the half-buried hood of the staff car. 

Hitchcock gestured for the young officer to move away from the buried man, and reluctantly he retreated a step. Kneeling down, the man brushed aside the leaves. Yes, it was Dietrich after all. He wasn’t sure until now. He checked for a pulse in Dietrich’s neck and found one. The officer was just stunned and pinned by the tree.

Looking around, Hitchcock decided that it was probably safer that way. The less attention paid to Dietrich by this mob, the better. He wasn’t sure why he should care if the man lived but a trace of the old North African relationship came back, and Moffitt saw no reason to have a decent man lynched by a mob. 

“These men are prisoners-of-war,” Alexander speaking in French, staring straight at Monique, challenging her. “They have surrendered. The Allies will be here today or tomorrow. There is no more need for killing!”

“They have been killing us for years!” she screamed back, shaking her fist. 

“Then take them to trial and hang them after a verdict!” he shouted back. “This,” he waved at Lehr, “was murder like what he does--did. You have made him pay for it! Let the others be condemned by the law not by the mob!”

She opened her mouth but someone else called, “Who are you, Monsieur?”

The Pére moved around Lehr’s hanging body to stand by Alexander. “He is from England, a colonel! He works with the résistants! And I, I who have buried so many of the résistants, agree with him!”

The crowd stirred, and Monique looked around seeing her support failing. “Comrades!”

Alexander threw out his arms. “The Allies are here already! I have several of them with me." He pointed to Moffitt, Tully and Hitchcock who smiled uncertainly, then back at the fountain where Troy was paddling his wounded feet, his jaw was set like stone. "He's an American!" A girl threw her arms around him and kissed him. 

The crowd around them murmured. "Let there be no more killing!" Alexander shouted. "The troops here have surrendered. Take their weapons, put them in a barn or—something—and hold them for the Allied soldiers to come! You will need to defend this village until the army comes, so keep their weapons and their ammunition, but no more of this!” His hand swept back towards Lehr. 

“You are not French!” Monique said desperately. “You do not know how we’ve suffered!” 

“How **you** ’ve suffered!” he shot back. “Do not make murderers of an entire city for your losses!”

She stared at him speechlessly, her face draining to white. “How would you know of that?” She pointed to Dietrich. “He could have killed many of us!”

Alexander took a step towards her, and she started back, bumping into Lehr’s body. “Whatever he has done, he is now a prisoner! And it is not your right to exact justice as if you were God himself, Mademoiselle. You have your revenge! Now let there be justice again in France!”

“Until the Boche come back again and kill us all!” she cried. “On ne passe pas!”

Alexander grimaced. "They shall not pass!" The old motto from the previous war was carved on plaques embedded in the stones of the Maginot forts. The Germans had shredded that French conceit with the blitzkrieg. 

“How dare you use that now! I fought in that war at the Somme! I fight now in this war against the same enemy! I will not let you murder men who have surrendered! I will not let that happen!” They glared at each other. Monique opened her mouth but an old man stepped out, supporting himself on a cane, holding up his hand. Alexander recognized him warily. Yves’ grandfather had come to town.

“We will obey you,” he said to Alexander. He snapped to Monique, “Go back to your cooking, woman, and your children! War is for men!”

“War is for us all, Grand-pére!” Helene gasped behind him. 

“Go home, old man, and let us win this war,” Monique slashed out. 

The crowd muttered, and Alexander knew she’d lost the battle attacking the old man. He was respected by the crowd. 

“Take les Boches to my barn!” said one farmer suddenly. “It is large enough to hold them all!”

“Comrades! Don’t give in now!” Monique said in despair throwing out her arms. “Remember the dead!”

The crowd ignored Monique’s cry. It began to move apart. 

Alexander wheeled around. “Moffitt, go help them sort out the Germans. Make sure those troops aren’t shot!”

“Yes, sir,” Moffatt said moving into the crowd. 

“Uh, Colonel,” Hitchcock called. Alexander turned. 

“Yes?”

“What about him?” 

Alexander jumped down so he could see who Hitchcock was pointing too. “Hans Dietrich?”

“The one and only.”

“Get him unburied, and make sure he gets to the barn,” Alexander ordered. “No, wait a minute.” He held out his hand to the young man. He asked in German, “You are the major’s aide, Leutnant?”

Felix nodded dumbly. 

“You must have some paper on you. I want it.”

Felix pulled out a telegram that had a message on side, which Alexander scanned briefly, then shrugged. “Not important. Your pen.”

He jotted down a note, then handed back the pen. He bent down and tucked it in the pocket of Dietrich’s jacket. “Now, get him to the barn with the others.”

“What was that all about, sir?” Hitchcock asked as they trotted back across the cobblestones to where Tully was gazing around doubtfully as Troy paddled his feet in the cool water of the fountain. 

“Dietrich speaks English like a native. If he escapes from a camp in Britain, he can vanish. I want him taken to America. Let’s see if that note works!” 

“It’s not really safe until our guys get here,” Tully said. 

Overhead a trio of planes roared by. They had US markings on them. “Our boys’ll be here sooner,” Troy said. “We can send a message to them about this.”

“Oh, you have a radio now?” Alexander asked.

“Yes, sir.” Tully said with a grin. “Stashed it in a doorway before the crowd got ugly.”

“Well, if it’s gone, we can always use Dietrich’s,” Alexander commented watching the Germans, under guard, extract the unconscious officer. “Bit of bad luck that he was here when this happened.”

“Not really, Colonel,” Moffatt said, coming out of the crowd, Helene on his heels. “Taking him out of the fighting is almost worth taking out a general. He is a very competent officer.” 

Alexander winced as if that stirred up an unpleasant memory. “And Rommel is out of the war as well. Damn it!”

“What now, sir?” Troy asked with a crooked grin. He sat stiffly as if he didn’t want to move. 

Alexander frowned. “Let’s move out. There’re more Jerries out there, and I’m not sure the Germans won’t be in control of this city again by sundown. It would be a pity to be shot at this point!”

“What about that?” Troy said waving to where Lehr’s body was still dangling from the tree. The girl had climbed down and disappeared, and the crowd was avoiding the hanged man beside spitting on his shadow. 

Alexander shrugged. “I leave it to the civilian authorities to find those responsible, and deal with it.”

“Like Monique,” Moffitt remarked. He scanned the crowd. The woman was gone. He didn’t miss her at all though he’d like to make sure she didn’t come back to shoot them in the back.

“Yes.” Alexander looked around at the swirling crowds. “We’d better get out of here. Maybe back to the church or somewhere where any incoming Jerry troops can’t find us.”

 

***

 

The afternoon sun reflected brilliantly off the rifles and helmets lying beside the men sprawled along the bank. The soldiers in their dust-covered uniforms traded jokes with the French girls who offered them fresh fruit from the orchards and kisses. It was very bucolic except for the fighter sweeps overhead. 

A driver parked the jeep in front of the church, and a man clambered out of the back seat, leaving the guard who had been seated beside him, and the driver behind. 

The general tipped his cap to the woman who was coming out, her scarf tied over her hair. She smiled. “Ma’am?”

She looked at the stars, and smiled. “Monsieur?”

“I’m General Wilson. I’m looking for the priest…”

She pointed to the graveyard. “I believe he is over there, General.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He touched his hat again, and walked over to the graveyard. 

He saw three men, stripped to the waist, standing beside an open grave, shovels in their hands. Cocking his head, he heard English, not French, and laughter. 

“Attention!” he said crisply coming up behind them, and all three stiffened and saluted. 

A shovelful of dirt came flying up, spraying the four of them. 

“What on earth…?” Wilson exclaimed stepping back. 

“General Wilson is here, sir,” Moffitt called down. 

“Oh, blast,” a voice commented. “Help me up.”

Moffitt lent a hand to half-naked Alexander who came out of the open grave covered with dirt. He saluted, and Wilson returned it. “Colonel Alexander?”

“General Wilson,” Alexander replied calmly. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

“Grave-digging?” Wilson said coolly. Alexander was tanned from outdoor exercise and had a sunburned nose. He looked as young as the men around him. 

“The Pére and I lost at poker last night,” Alexander said cheerfully. “So we get the first dig today.”

“`Pére’?”

The priest jumped up, grabbed the edge of the grave, then Tully and Hitchcock gave him a hand. “I am Pére Mathieu, General.”

Wilson nodded to him. “I am glad to meet you.” His gaze shifted to Alexander. “I must speak with you.”

“Right. Why don’t the rest of you finish this…” Alexander’s eyes looked at the grave for a second, then he chuckled. “I did lose that bet, didn’t I? Go inside and get something to drink. I’ll be along.” He picked up a towel that sat nearby, wiped his face, then picked up his shirt. 

“Yes, sir,” they chorused and saluted. Dropping their shovels, they left the two men by the half-dug grave and headed for the church. 

“How is Troy?” Wilson asked as he and Alexander walked towards the river. 

“Wounded but healing. I’ve told him to not try to do a lot of exercise.”

“I read the report. He will be able to walk again?”

“Certainly,” Alexander said briskly. “But he needs time to heal, and the men are exhausted.”

Wilson snorted. “They don’t look it, Colonel.”

“It doesn’t take much thought to dig graves – it takes a lot to act in enemy territory for months,” Alexander contradicted. 

“And yourself?” Alexander shrugged. “I also heard about what happened in the town the day that Gestapo officer was hanged.”

For a second Alexander’s eyes showed wariness, then he hid it. “Yes, sir.”

“And no one tried to stop the lynching?”

“There was a riot going on – I was more concerned with my mission and the men,” Alexander replied aloofly

Wilson frowned. “Your mission was over. I hear there will be an investigation.” He changed the topic. “You heard about the attack on Hitler?”

“The failure of the attack, yes. I hear Hitler is eating his own – the High Command, the officer corps.”

“Yes. If we wait long enough every competent officer will be dead before we attack Berlin.”

“I doubt that sir, but at least we have stopped them from using Major Dietrich.”

“I told my troops to send him to a holding camp as you ordered,” Wilson said. “You seemed to care for him, Colonel. Why?”

Alexander smiled slightly. “Despite everything, he saved my life and others in Norway. It would be a waste to see him swing from a rope.”

“We’ve co-opted his lieutenant into helping us. He seemed willing.”

“The young boy?”

“The Felix kid. They keep getting younger and younger,” Wilson commented disdainfully.

“You trust him?”

“No – but he might be useful in the future if we deprogram him. We have to start somewhere in building a new Germany after this war.” Wilson shrugged. “Who was the grave for?”

“Another boy, Yves. We retrieved the remains yesterday. He will be buried today in a couple of hours,” Alexander said simply, his gaze on the placid river. They both heard laughter from the soldiers and the girls. “We retrieved what was left of Gabrielle Marchand yesterday, and buried her with full French honors.”

“They were both part of your team, weren’t they? That must be hard.”

Suddenly, Alexander looked older than his years “Gabrielle. . . She was rather special to us all. It turns out that Lieutenant Moffitt knew her longer than any of us. I didn’t know that until now. Burying her was difficult on us all. Quite a day.” His expression returned to its calm expression. “Why are you here, sir?”

Wilson reached into his pocket and pulled out a sealed envelope. “Here are your next orders, Colonel.”

Alexander let out the slightest of sighs, and took the paper. “Thank you, sir, for delivering them.”

“When London and General Eisenhower order, I obey,” Wilson said with edgy sarcasm. He hadn’t wanted to play errand boy for the British but when his own command sent orders, he followed them. “I’ll say my goodbyes to the team, then go back to HQ. Good luck, Colonel.”

They saluted each other, then Wilson strode off across the graveyard, leaving Alexander fingering the envelope. 

Finally, he tore it open and read the contents. “Williams must be mad. I can’t go there -- it’s still occupied! Beside, they know me in Paris!”

 

***

 

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel lay in his hospital bed and wondered when his death would come in. As soon as he heard of the failed attempt on Hitler’s life, he knew suspicion would fall on him. It didn’t need more than suspicion to bring on the executioners. Was this what Larson had known during that meeting at La Roche-Guyon? What had happened to the English spy? Or Dietrich? Or so many of his men? What was happening outside this hospital room?

He sighed. At least if the war was over soon, it wouldn’t be because he betrayed Hitler or signed over the armies – the war was now up to the Allied armies to win on their own. 

But he would like to know how it ended. He would like to live that long. 

 

***

 

Williams put a report in a folder, and tucked it into a pile of paper. This news was distressing. The résistant Monique had fled to Paris to meet up with the Communist underground that was particularly strong in the capital. According to Lieutenant Moffitt’s reports, she had been a good fighter. She could be dangerous if the Communist Party took over in France after the war – she didn’t seem to like anyone but her countrymen and the Soviet Union.

He would have to make sure, one way or another, that she was… minimized as she had been during the riot in Gallion-sur-Seine. Maybe, if they caught her, they could send her to Moscow. Let Stalin handle her. Or even eliminated her, if necessary. Williams didn’t really care. 

He’d have to handle that investigation which the Americans were fussing about as well. From all accounts, Lehr deserved to be hanged with or without trial. Williams suspected someone was playing politics with the joint commando team, and he was determined not to allow it to happen. The Rat Patrol worked together well without interference.

The last report he’d had out of Berlin was that Larson was back in the city keeping a low profile and trying to avoid hanging along with the other conspirators against Hitler. It was said that even Rommel was under suspicion. Considering the officer was probably dying from his wounds, it would seem redundant to execute him, but Hitler was totally paranoid. The only question was whether he’d die in August or September – or if the Allied armies could rescue Rommel from his own. Williams wanted that if possible. It would be useful to have a leader of Rommel’s quality to lead a post-War Germany.

Williams donned his coat and hat and headed out into the darkness of a London evening to meet his wife for dinner. Behind him, Allied Headquarters bustled with activity as soldiers came and went, and new orders went out. The war went on.

 

 

***

Bibliography

Brown, Anthony Cave, Bodyguard of Lies, New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Chambard, Claude, The Maquis: A History of the French Resistance Movement, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1970.

Goralski, Robert, World War II Almanac: 1931-1945, New York: Perigee Book, 1981.

Mitcharm, Samuel W. Jr., Rommel’s Last Battle: The Desert Fox and the Normandy Campaign, New York: Stein and Day, 1983.

Ousby, Ian, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Peschanski, Denis et al, Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy, France 1940-1944, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1988.

Ruge, Friedrich, Rommel in Normandy: Reminiscences by Friedrich Ruge, San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1979.

Young, Desmond, Rommel: The Desert Fox, New York: Harper and Brothers: 1950. 

Internet Sources

Giverny-art.com/La Roche-Guyon, www.giverny-art.com/rocheguyon/indexen.htm

La Roche-Guyon, www.france-random.com/rocheguyon/

Maginot line, http://www.maginot-line.com/ang/c_sommaire.htm

Mistral Estate Services, XIIIth century Chateau, www.real-estate-in-france.com/auq.htm.

Normandy, Special Operation/Special Operations Executive Plan,  
http://Normandy.eb.com/Normandy/pri/Q00340.html

SAGA magazine – history – Rommel, www.saga.co.uk/publishing/history/rommel.htm.

Maps

Itineraires Cyclotouristiques en Haute-Normandie 2001

Rand McNally New Millennium World Atlas Deluxe CD-ROM


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